Typological reimagination of a skyscraper through the reinterpretation of relationship between the architecture and urbanism of Manhattan

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 83).The 20th century's notion of a skyscraper in Manhattan, a symbolic object aloof from a city, should be redefined due to the reinterpretation of the grid to accommodate more public amenity and facilitate the cultural contexts of Manhattan. These Days, pedestrian plazas, transportation infrastructure, and zoning resolution have given individuality to each part of the grid which used to be seemingly identical with little public provision. Especially, Mid-Manhattan shows this tendency clearly. Pedestrian activity and cultural programs of Theater District and Times Square has infiltrated into the strict grid and created Mid-Manhattan's own public realm. In this regard, given the grid's capacity for reinvention, how might architecture continue to adapt and response to today's new change? Defying the conventional typology of a skyscraper, a stack of individual programs, the thesis is aiming to reimagine the typology of a skyscraper to address the building's relationship with the urban fabric and respond to the existing street life and culture. Finally, the thesis proposes a skyscraper as an urban connector, by virtue of rethinking of circulation and structure. This new type of a skyscraper supports the multiple strata of public space and cultural programs, such as a theater and a museum, to extend existing urban contexts, art and performance, of Mid-Manhattan, not only at street level but into the sky above. Also, as an urban-scale strategy, the project also seeks to interconnect the dense grid with vertical structures with the most dominant public realm in Manhattan, Central Park, through a 3 dimensionally manipulated building form.by Jae Kyung Kim.M.Arch