Case Study 01
Astor Place + Cooper Square, New York, NY
WXY Studio
Busy streets near the Cooper Union, NYC’s grant-based design and engineering school, led to the pedestrian experience being less than ideal among this urban college proto-campus. WXY Studio’s main intention with this project was to reinforce/pad pedestrian corridors along the three plaza – Peter Cooper Park, the Village Plaza, and the Alamo Plaza, home to the fabled “Cube,” a once-rotatable sculpture designed by Tony Rosenthal in 1967. Specifically, WXY’s design involved cutting off Astor Place and stitching the Plaza to the nearby 26 Astor Place. Moreover, by the Muji, WXY filled in the Southern part of the Cooper Square roadway, adding plaza and seating. WXY buffered most sidewalks in the vicinity, notably near the busy Astor Place subway stop, one of the oldest in the city, which is a stop on the 4, 5 and 6 trains
The site’s buildings, including Fred Petersen’s 1859 Foundation Building, and the Morphosis-designed Engineering Building, are both an essential part of the public realm, and it was a focus in the drawings and the models to convey their influence on the material, form, and flow of WXY’s design, which acts as an intermediary among its surrounding architecture. What results from these interventions is a kind of campus “quad” for the small – but very hardworking – population at the Cooper Union.
Case Study 02
URBN HQ, Philadelphia, PA
D.I.R.T Studio
In a comprehensive study of D.I.R.T Studio’s URBN Headquarters in the South Philly Navy Yard, I conducted site surveys in order to draw the site in axon and plan. Part of the study was a comic that found humor in the irony of the site: Julie Bargmann’s plan used a lot of recycled material, and URBN produces even more waste from fast fashion. Lastly, I made diagrams to understand enclosure, composition, material, as well as the passage of time as understood by the site.