Amanda and her partner Natalie designed their project to address the two sides of DUMBO. On the one side they saw the commercial shops and retail stores adjacent to Jay and Front street. On the other side are Vinegar Hill and the developing naval yard. The site is the divide between these two sides so they wanted to find a way to emphasize a path through the site to create a connection between these opposite sides.

Their formal geometry sets up a large building that extends diagonally across the site. Their goal is to incorporate the entire program into one form. Two directions of circulation invite people into the site to engage with the separate parts. One sends people through the site to the opposite side. The other breaks off from the main path to take people through the project program like the market. I thought that this path was not as successful as the one that projects pedestrians through the project. The entrance to it needed to be more clearly defined through some sort of projection or recession on the lower floor. The uniformity of the facade made it look slightly more corporate than what I think Amanda and Natalie wanted it to be. Beginning to push and pull the facade, designing entrances and circulation towers could make the project read better from the street as a building that pedestrians are supposed to engage with on more than just the ground level.

The critics’ biggest comment about their project was that it doesn’t communicate the different parts of the program successfully. They had successfully promoted a movement through the site but the circulation path that is supposed to bring people inside was not as clear as it should have been. The result is that it becomes hard for users to know what is happening on the floor above them and they become disconnected from the activities happening on the upper floors.

The critics spent  the conversation questioning the decisions behind the master plan and the layout. It seemed as though the formal geometry was chosen arbitrarily and the critics stated that the shape weren’t doing much to help them. Each programmatic element is unique and right now it doesn’t seem that they are being treated in a unique way specific to them. I thought that the idea behind one building was done well but the autonomy of it all lost the idea of the mixed use program.

Jamie suggested two different ways of going about the next steps in the project. The first was that Amanda and Natalie keep the autonomy that they had set up. He wanted them to design some object could unify the two sides of the site, that at the moment were treated in the same way. Jamie suggested that they design a masonry object that crawls up and across the building, tying in the ground plane with the height of their project.

The other way that Darla and Jamie suggested that they could take the project was to create an aggregate of program which might better distinguish the programmatic pieces better. In doing this they would need to establish some set of rules that would make it easy for them to create an individual identity for the program. Both the north and south facades were treated in the exact same manner, which brought up questions about the thermal performance of the design as well. Because of the two conditions created by the sun, I think that it would be better to take the latter of the two options presented by Jamie and Darla and create a hodge podge of material and structure. Out of the two opposite poles I think that the mixture of program would work better and be more interesting than the single unifying object.

The other part of the project that needed to be developed more were the circulation towers. I think that the location of them made sense where the project kinks and turns, but the treatment of them needs to better developed. Right now they are just large glass atriums that do not really have any program in them besides circulation. Sandra suggested to populate them maybe with a winter garden for the residences. I think that if they want to keep the size of them the same they could even put more retail within them. The storefronts could read from the street as well which might help to bring people upward through the building. However, I think it would just be better to shrink the size of them and use them only as vertical circulation, and make them only glass on the top to let light through the atrium to the ground floor.

As far as the presentation goes, I was really impressed with the amount of drawings and the model that they had. The renderings were really nice and I think communicated the project the best. But they hardly referenced them in the presentation! I think that for the final, limit the amount of plan drawings you have. They’re all pretty much the same give or take a few pieces and they are hardly ever talked about in the critique. This would open up a lot more space for drawings that communicate the idea of the project. I noticed a couple times during the presentation where they were looking for drawings that weren’t there so were forced to reference the plans, not the clearest way of communicating an idea.

Critique of the Critique

The critics’ comments fall mostly into the industrial and inspired realms. They questioned the efficiency of their pathway to achieve a connection between both sides and the formal language that they were establishing their building. They wanted to see more development of the elevations of the building.

Selina and Hajir presented “The Link” as a holistic community solution for residents and employees of the DUMBO neighborhood. Their creation of a large mixed-use building utilizes the layering of multiple different programs in a structure that occupies the northeast corner of the site. Public plaza space mediates the relationship between this large structure and the theater/market and subway entrance on the other side of the site. The two claim that the plaza space is split in use – one side to embrace the kinetic flow of pedestrian commuters and shoppers and the other to serve as auxiliary static space to the adjacent mega structure.

Having been exposed to the teams project before, I am relatively aware of what the goal of the project is. However I felt the presentation of their ideas could have been marginally stronger in order to convey the purpose of their design choices to external viewers, especially in the ordering and organization of programmatic elements.

In presenting the variety of uses and spaces incorporated into the building, the dialogue jumped between Selina and Hajir as they attempted to showcase what they were describing by pointing to both drawings and the model.

The critics immediately requested further explanation of the organizational logic. I believe that the development of the team’s layering diagram could be extremely useful in simply conveying their design ordering strategy. The image that they used to show their analysis of pedestrian movement and transportation access could easily justify their ground level program choices, as well as serve as a very clear graphic to alleviate the difficulty of describing a complex project.

In light of this, I am in agreement with the critics that this is a very successful proposal. For such a large-scale project, the team has come very close in many different instances in providing a solution for the DUMBO community. Due to this, the critics were largely on board with the layered architectural vocabulary that the two proposed. With the acceptance of the large formal strategy, the jurors focused on specific functional and organization issues.

One theme of the critique was the emphasis on the vertical connection between layers. With such strong horizontal movement created through long layers paralleling the ground, the cohesive integration of the contrasting vertical movement is crucial to the development of the scheme, especially where providing access to different levels is also providing access to different programs. Therefore, the role of the vertical circulation spaces is incredibly important. Developing a hierarchy and separation of entrances to different levels and programs while retaining a universal functionality for all uses is necessary, albeit very difficult.

This can be instrumental in solving the economic sustainability issue to which Mehrdad spoke. Although he had no problem with the design mixing luxury and affordable housing, he highlighted the importance of incorporating this choice into part of the architectural vocabulary. The two can play off of each other and create a unique dichotomy while coexisting within the same structure. Since the only connection between these two is the vertical circulation space, one way this can be achieved is through the manipulation of entrances, lobbies, and access to each floor through material choices and sizes of space. Scott and Mehrdad highlighted some of the layering problems present in the design such as the apartment level. Reorganizing access to these layers could be key in developing functional circulation that solves the day-lighting issues of the current design.

The remaining majority of the critique focused on the relationship of the site design and composition in relationship to the proposed buildings. The team’s model was incredibly successful in conveying their image of how the site functioned as an entity of the DUMBO neighborhood. It displayed the “great level of specificity” which Christine complemented them for. The critics believed the west side of the site to appear disjointed from the entire proposal, largely due to the individual nature of the market/theater and subway entrance. The boundaries of pedestrian space that these two formed seem too loose, resulting in a large amount of plaza space, which may not serve any specific purpose. I believe that if the team were to combine the theater, market and subway entrance into one structure it would assist in delineating the public space into a more orderly formation. The two structures could serve as bookends for the site, compressing the central interior space. This more static space would be contrasted by the highly kinetic action occurring at the terminating corners of the site, which would be filtered into the multiple uses of the program.

Mehrdad also called for a potentially more uniform representation of the collective idea. He claimed that if a layering strategy is the project’s driving conceptual force that it should also clearly influence the formal site organization. Although I feel that this may have been a useful tactic for the conception of a scheme, I believe that the neutrality of the negative space in Selina and Hajir’s design functions well as with the complex buildings. The potential for a layered site design is there, but in a limited capacity. Only a very subtle layering would maintain the hierarchy of site and structure evident in the current proposal. A highly literal representation of layering with the remaining space may loose the finesses that the project exhibits in order to contrast the complexity of the nearby structures.

Critique of the Critique 

The three critics (Scott, Mehrdad, and Christine) were essentially in agreement about the criticism of the project. The initial comments focused on the formal arrangement of the project but then moved towards the civic roles and responsibilities the project held. While I agreed with many of the suggestions about the formulation of the site and building, I believe that because of incredibly complex nature of the project, addressing all of the different issues and creating a beautiful, functional, proposal is nearly impossible with such a small team. The later portion of the critique was focused largely on technical and functional details of the project. These comments very appropriately address some of the most significant design challenges that the team faces. Mehrdad called for a straightforward mapping of strategies for the problem that is the driving idea, which will exhibit the group’s refinement of the program so that multiple different spaces can function utilizing the same structural, mechanical, and egress systems (to achieve a true harmony between inspired, civic, and industrial orders). I believe it is useful for Selina and Hajir to aim for this clarity and refinement, which will truly strengthen their already advanced project.

Photo: Selina and Hajir