Jacques Herzog once said a pleasant thing about being an architect is you don’t know anything. In the positive sense it allows you to pursue architectural projects on ample ground. For example when you look into an OMA monograph you are confronted with volumes of a vast variety of information underlying critically their actual projects – urbanistic, geographical, political, social, economical etc.
This was exercised widely at Sci-Arc on the occaison of a review of a graduate thesis presentation this fall.
The thesis project was presented as teamwork of five students. They developed a mixed use high-rise building on Hudson River at the rail yard of the Penn Station at 34^th St in Manhattan. The site is probably the most debated in Manhattan, beside the WTC. Since a rail yard seems wasted land here numerous ideas were generated to develop it, involving the main post station, Madison Square Garden and Penn Station all adjacent to the east. Aesthetically through skillfully rendered images the project strongly reflected the input of architectural design concepts developed by Hernan Diaz Alonso, who was the Advisor. As previously noticed on other occasions with student projects his influence was evident. The tower appeared as a disintegrated structure on a plinth emerging from the water towards the city. Further part of the presentation was an animation and the urban context in a large site model of the area from the Hudson River to the Empire State Building. The animation used background sounds of cars and trucks passing by, a helicopter flying around the building etc. to associate urban environment. The model outlined the project’s strong relation to the river and the duality with the Empire State Building.

Not surprisingly and looking at the renderings the design was received very well, except when the question came up of what is it then. Especially the site model focused on critical issues, mainly about the impact on Manhattan and – in the way it was situated and it correlated with the Empire State Building – how it is organized as a gate to the city and accordingly as a means of urban planning on different levels. As a gate the project takes on a significant role regarding public space. And for public space it relates immediately to the infrastructure of Penn Station/Madison Square Garden on the east side and the emphasized importance of the waterway (with the terminals at 42^nd St) on the west side. Beside these aspects of public space mainly articulated through the plinth the tower above consisted of private apartments. The appealing and sophisticated design itself and the location reflected exclusivity at the West Side which further implied also exclusion of certain parts of the population. Roughly within these parameters a discussion among the jurors developed to understand the nature of the project. I said among the jurors because the team wasn’t able to participate in the discussion. These questions were unfolding all the potential of the project and the project itself wasn’t able to address them. So was the design team’s indecisiveness. Obviously and as mentioned by them these programmatic and urban planning aspects were not the point of interest. Of course this is an acceptable position but the project didn’t speak for itself either as an advanced design breaking new ground. I felt the five students were stuck into debate among themselves about formal interpretations and considerations and they were overwhelmed by the critical questions their project raised. Maybe they should have followed Herzog’s words and looked at an OMA monograph before placing their design in the chosen site. As agreed during the discussion the project as presented could have been located anywhere. Facing the challenges of an OMA monograph this to me as an architect would be very unsatisfying.