BUILDING

Competition in New York

Location: New York

Year: 2016

Projects team: Alessandro Acciarino, Gabriele Corbo, Jacopo Costanzo, Isabella Zaccagnini

with

Vittorio Gatti

Renders:

Rui Silva

Olmstead and Vaux created an artificial park. Where there was once a swamp, they placed an idyllic landscape. It is nature as idealized by man, one would say.

But in painting this landscape they forgot one critical element; the “ruin.” A trace of the past, a past that perhaps never was, but nonetheless serves as a lesson for the future.

So from this point, we begin our proposal, equally as artificially. Based on scientific and historical analysis, we have identified the Croton Aqueduct as a necessary element that deserves to be celebrated, even fetishized.

The aqueduct emerges – reemerges – in the great reservoir. The great object which once nourished the city now sits above the water; a triumphant return, ready to be celebrated.
And so our ruin is realized, bringing with it a reflection that emphasizes its horizontal existence.

This system, with its human dimension, relentless in its scope along a horizontal line, is an ideological contrast with the vertical Manhattan development seen in its background.
At the end of the aqueduct, an internal stair, leading one upward to a viewpoint over the city.

Immersed in the lake, one of the few undeveloped areas in Manhattan, you can reflect on the irrationality of time, and the importance of the ruins.