Open Collections

Alterations : renovations and additions to the Parson’s School of Fashion Design

University of British Columbia

The concepts guiding this project originate from an interest in the connectivity between perception, architecture, and the forms and functions of the city. The project aims to foster a visual morphology particular to its midtown Manhattan site in order to . establish an architecture that shares an experiential, and spatial logic with the city. It is the intention of this project to exploit the built-, in interdependence and capacity for simultaneity of Manhattan by developing a building that conflates the oppositions and boundaries that also characterize the city. Oppositions that are brought together in this project include public and private, interior and exterior, foreground and background, banal and extraordinary, the scale of the body and of the city, seeing and being seen, old and new. A reweaving of existing conditions in terms of passage, experience, vision, materiality, and program is the key strategy in the project. Addressing the city and its architecture as a completed body to be reinterpreted, I have selected a renovation project that adopts a mid strata rooftop as the site for a program that serves both public and private institutions. The Parson's School of Fashion Design located in the midtown Fashion District is presently housed in a near windowless six story building originally designed as a synagogue and men's club by William Lescaze in 1959. A community facility to be established by the Fashion Center business organization in conjunction with the school consists of a library, gallery, archive, and show space, is to be sited on the roof of the Parson's building. A symbiotic relationship between the programs is echoed in the relationship between the architecture of the original building and the addition. By bringing together differences and calibrating them in the architecture it is the goal of this project to enrich the urban experience by offering a moment of heightened simultaneity.

Thesis/Dissertation

application/pdf

2009-03-21

For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/6337

Architecture

University of British Columbia

UBCV

DSpace