HIGHSCAPE

The lack of urban spaces mainly caused by the high density of population and the constant flux of migration, has been a well-known fact for decades. Hudson Yards, a new large urban development on the western side of Manhattan, poses itself with a high potential to offer popular commercial and residential spaces, including a new center for artistic innovation called The Shed, not only for its immediate surroundings, but more importantly for New York on an urban scale.

Integrating the Highscape with a shift, between 30th and 31st street at the junction of 9th Avenue, by combining its form and structure, taking an avantgarde looking design approach to obtain coherency between plan and sections, and harmonizing the bridge with its topography are the three main concepts shaping the design. Urban and local scale proposals of the design all feed into and support the main concept.

During the journey in, on and under the Highscape, it will mark a memorable moment along the route between Manyoin Station and the Shed.The existing Crossing creates the barriers of an undesirable walk along the service accesses of the two Mega buildings, Penn Station and Postal Office.

Moreover, the design of the Highscape will be equipped with facilities which will have a significant impact on the quality of the movement in the modern city by

becoming a popular public space which makes the Shed as the termination point at Hudson Yards.

How does your design demonstrate unique functionality as a distinctive, efficient, and desirable pathway for day-to-day, round-the-clock travel between Moynihan Station and Hudson Yards? What are the elements that engage pedestrians in an experience that rewards this mode of travel?

URBAN PASSAGE

Highscape will orchestrate of different speeds of pedestrian movement by redefining the term ‘Passage’. Every passage orientates space. Highscape will be a powerful place that changes us.

We don't pass through it unchanged, the one who leaves the Office in the evening is not the same as the one who arrived in the morning. You pass through it both directions. It creates the image of one-way trip each time you pass through it. It touches the sensation of users by being in the Highscape, on the Highscape, and under the Highscape… 

It creates a visual effect, it creates repetition, it slows, it accelerates, it alters the movement of people by its design formation. It generates a meaning to the public as an Urban Passage.

URBAN LOBBY

Highscape is envisioned to act as an Urban Lobby which integrates recreational, cultural, and sports-related facilities with an emphasis on natural life and ecologies. These multiple focal areas are connected to each other via various circulation routes which are characterized by a fluid, continuous design approach.

 

ECOLOGICAL VISION

Around the Urban Lobby area on Highscape the Water Tanks play an integral role in the improvement of reusable resources quality. As such, water tanks have a key function in the stabilization of rainwater in urban developments. For the Lighting at night without a need for additional elements, the balustrades have solar powered lighting functions.

How and why was the particular structural steel design solution selected?
The design of the Highscape is governed by a unified approach with the fluid design dynamics of the passage, a coherent design solution, adaptability to the surrounding, and capacity to present visual continuity throughout the site with lightweight structural solutions. In this respect, Highscape as a bridge integrates form and structure, where form and structure cannot be treated as singular elements in the design.

Owing to its lightweight steel structural solution, and generates visual continuity throughout the path. A key element of the pedestrian crossing is its secondary pedestrian pathway, which tears away from the ground plane of the crossing and follows the curvature of the steel structure along the pedestrian pathway across the Highscape. In this way, while pedestrians can pass along the east-west axis along the crossing, they can also walk down to the street level on several locations and reach the pedestrian route.

With the generation of various differentiated circulation routes on the crossing, form, structure, and circulation become intertwined design elements.

In other words, the skeleton-like steel structure system itself gives the opportunity to generate spaces for the pedestrians by being in the Highscape, on the Highscape, and under the Highscape.