12.4.13

Responsive Infrastructure for a Sinking Manhattan



Responsive Infrastructure by Natalie Chelliah combats the paradoxical problem of lower Manhattan’s future; a city with a footprint slowly sinking into the ocean while its population consistently expands. Less Space : more people. An new city infrastructure is created that not only elevates the previously 2D sidewalks into a 3D matrix of interconnected bridges, but also provides endless possibilities of inhabitation and use.

If the 2 dimensional grid of Manhattan represents the early 20th Century’s mechanistic, reductive view of nature and our place within it, the suspended city then redefines our relationship to the earth and the environments we have constructed. The dynamic network is the new model of all complex systems and life. Unbound by its restraints to the earth, the city enters a new stage of evolution.