Manhattan Recreational Park Tower

By:  | February - 19 - 2010

Project submitted to the 2006 Skyscraper Competition
Designed by: Andrew Colopy, Aimee Chang

park-tower-0

Welcome to Formiscucity, Manhattan’s premier recreational P.A.R.C. tower – where a new way of life is taking shape!

Formiscucity, located just west of Times Square in Manhattan’s new and most contested real estate, occupies a single city block as an uber-special island within the man-made islands of the city’s 200’ x 800’ block grid system.  The 50-story tower reaches up 600 feet, with a footprint covering 25% of the site to achieve the super density characteristic of Manhattan.  This extreme density promotes diverse interaction as a microcosm of the city itself.

The remainder of the site begins as a horizontal green space on 11th Avenue, continuing up vertically through the tower’s 50 stories.  Four core biozones (jungle, arctic, mountain, and desert – each with their characteristic fauna/climate) are utilized as a vertical recreational park space, density generator, and internal climate moderator for energy conservation.  For adventurous climbers, the mountain service and structural core additionally provide vertical climbing access to the top.

Surrounding the biozones are 600 privately occupied generic lofts.  Lofts may be flexibly inhabited by market-rate and 30% below market-rate housing, commercial/retail, and/or office space as driven by economic demands, such that Formiscucity never ends up as a vacant office tower during an extreme economic downturn.

Whereas typical skyscrapers intensely consume, Formiscucity uses no more energy than the neighboring 6-story brownstones.  This is achieved through a double-skin structural façade with solar and waste water collection, a grey water system, geothermal pumps, and organic light emitting diodes that actively re-dress the tower in response to Times Square and Manhattan’s ever-changing imagery.

Formiscucity spatially embodies and psychologically projects the extreme “uber-specialness” of Manhattan’s island density, diversity, and variability to residents, workers, recreation seekers, locals, and tourists.  Additionally, effort to formally and programmatically re-conceive Manhattan’s skyscraper typology in response to current city conditions sponsors a tower ecology of community, ecosystems, populations, and behaviors.

Ultimately, Formiscucity aims to simultaneously address Manhattan’s extreme social and political climate of divergent community, developer, resident, and architectural desires through form, program provision, energy consumption, economic sustainability, and quality of life.

Formiscucity… Inhabit Variety!

park-tower-1

park-tower-2

Leave a Reply