Launching event

All the participating ESAYA groups are invited to the launching event, with the projection of the film Manhattan by Woody Allen.

Friday 7th Sept. at 16:00 in room C 222

Unit T33 will meet after the film, in our room (118), to discuss research tasks.

Research lines

Today we are debating possible lines of research to launch the project. Each student will post a comment describing an option. (click on the "comments" link, below these lines on the right)

ESAYA outline

The Downtown 2010 - Manhattan research within ESAYA is outlined in the following document:
click here

downtown 2010 data

The following documents are available for download:

Downtown Alliance annual report for 2006. This document contains an introduction into what the Downtown Alliance does, and features graphs and data.
click here

Retail Location Guide for Lower Manhattan. A 2007 document that has more current data about downtown than the annual report.
click here

Residential and Hotel Sites in Lower Manhattan (2010). A map that shows all the hotel and residential sites projected for downtown in 2010.
click here

downtown 2010 framework

This workshop is a part of the Downtown 2010 - Manhattan research project, run by Downtown Alliance, Laureate International Universities and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya; it is a part of Phase 1, as in the following framework:

A major challenge that downtown New York is facing in order to continue attracting residents and businesses is to reverse the lack of vitality during the late hours of the day and the weekends.

Downtown New York is the historical financial heart of Manhattan, and its geographic characteristics provide the potential of becoming a dynamic center of life in New York City. The history behind some of the buildings, the waterfront, and the particular urban layout are some of the factors that can be intensified to reach the final goal.

The goal of Downtown 2010 is to inspire committed action towards the vision of generating a true transformation of the downtown that enriches the life of New Yorkers and the urbanism for the generations to come.

An international competition is targeted as the best way to make this vision a reality. The final results would be the creation of powerful and homogeneous vitality during all hours of the day, week and year, extracting all the potential offered by the district.

As any type of transformation in the urbanism of a city, it is required the support of the Population and Private and Public institutions. In order to reach to all of these layers of the society, the process will be divided in three phases:

Phase 1: Exposition about Strategic proposals coming from Outstanding International Universities. The main goal is to generate discussion and momentum in the media and the citizenship. This momentum will help to get economical and political support from public and private organizations. The proposals should be based on creativity, relationship with the economical factors, recommendations from the Downtown Alliance and comments from other possible developers involved.

Phase 2: Creation of a multidisciplinary committee, including the organizations involved in Phase 1 and incorporating other public institutions, art centers and Developers. The committee will generate a realistic and attractive scope for the competition basing it on the feedback obtained from Phase 1.

Phase 3: International Competition. The proposal should create a minor impact on the current buildings and functions of the district, but should provide a huge added value.

sharing space framework

This workshop is a part of the sharing space research project, run by carlos arroyo. A variety of environments have been studied so far, including Madrid, Tokio, Bogota and Vienna, through a series of workshops and courses.

Informing our study of URBAN STRUCTURE AND WAYS OF LIFE we may define a privacy gradient to frame the infinite intermediate situations between public and private.
Between the public square and the bedroom, there is a whole array of examples that question the traditional divide, the black and white conception of public and private.

This leads us to the study of

SHARING SPACE

Public square – temporarily privatized public space with no contract – benches on the street – licensed occupation – open-air cafés – kiosks – advertising – privately-owned public access space – shopping centres with piazzas and streets – the tube – accessible spaces with admission reserves – open shops – self-service – closed shops – shops with a bell – public buildings and services – libraries – publicly-owned restricted access space – pay-to-enter accessible space – residences – urban communities – gated communities with shops and services – co-ownership – shared systems – shared leisure – swimming-pools – tennis – crèche – portal – media – virtual space – shared flats– grouped units – clans– families – friends – symbiosis – internet – wikipaedias – from the bedroom to cyberspace and back again.

This spectrum of intermediate situations covers almost everything, and yet, it is little studied. We still operate under the false impression of the radical separation between private and public.
The aim of this exercise is to verbalise, visualise, get to know these places as they are now, and to create a set of tools to control and design shared space in future projects.