CRITICAL PRESERVATION
FALL 2023
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
PROF. IVI DIAMANTOPOULOU & RAMI ABOU-KHALIL
COLLABORATORS: YUELIN WANG, ETHAN FOX
Managing 37,000 designated landmarks across New York City, the Landmarks Preservation Commission(LPC) strongly influences New York's urban fabric. The LPC must approve any alterations to designated landmarks through a system of public hearings. Located in the heart of the Greenwich Village Historic District, this proposal imagines a new headquarters for the Landmarks Preservation Commission which endeavors to better engage the public in the decision making process.
The new design encases the Northern Dispensary, a landmarked building on a unique triangular site in Greenwich Village, creating opportunities to interact with the seemingly generic building, unveiling it's rich history.
By wrapping a new facade around the Northern Dispensary, the proposal only allows selected views in to incite curiosity while highlighting important connections to its surroundings. The encasement scales up the landmark's triangular form while the new facade's red brick echoes the village's scale, rhythm, and materiality. The LPC's headquarters presents itself as related to but distinctly different from its context, calling attention without revealing the whole story, encouraging people to explore more.
This design reclaims the landmark's primary street frontage, where stepped forms act as a theater for civic discussion and connect the headquarters to the life of Christopher Park to the North. The plaza smoothly leads into the hanging main circulation stair which creates experiences of viewing the Northern Dispensary from previously impossible perspectives, highlighting specific moments in the building's history. In addition to viewpoints, platforms host gathering and exhibition spaces chronicling the LPC's history, artifacts from New York's building heritage and current debates within the agency.
The main circulation stair winds around and through the existing Northern Dispensary, engaging at critical moments to continually re-frame one's perspective and reveal the inner workings of the LPC. The stair rises into the hearing hall, where the public can listen to and participate in proceedings. This design literally hangs the regulatory functions over the landmarked building but invites the public to come up and participate in discussions shaping development in NYC. A frosted glass floor projects regulatory transparency while bringing natural light into the plaza between the old and new.
Rather than freezing a building in time, this proposal seeks to reinterpret how the Landmarks Preservation Commission typically treats a landmarked building, engaging with the existing at key points to create an active conversation with the landmark, allowing the building to physically share its story.