Urban, Social & Institutional

Seamen’s Church Institute Community Center // Beacon Field – WTC Memorial

This category begins with two competition entries featuring institutional buildings open to the public and serving essential social and urban functions, hence the title. Although these projects are speculative, they energized the studio by allowing it to venture beyond conventional norms, unrestricted by budgetary and regulatory constraints. More importantly, they enabled the studio to articulate its stance and strategies on social and urban agendas.

Socially, these projects aim to critique or disrupt existing modes of human interaction and offer architectural solutions that encourage new dynamics. For instance, the idea to project the victims’ biographies in the Beacon Field / WTC Memorial came from an observation in New York City’s subway in the early 1990s, and the observed phenomenon worsens with smartphones. That is, if you live in New York City and hold a job that has regular work hours, you are likely to see the same people in the same crowded subway train every morning. The social norm is not to strike a conversation; reading a book or a newspaper was the most convenient way to avoid conversation, and the New York Times led the charge by carefully dividing their stories and columns to perfect the “subway fold.” You may see the same people daily, yet their lives remain unknown. This social norm encourages “minding your own business” and suppresses curiosity, compassion, and connectedness. In Beacon Field, we turn this critique inward. The memorial space is filled with pools of blurry lights, and only when you make an effort to seek out and read about the victims do you gain insight into their lives.

As for our urban strategy, it’s quite coincidental that both of these entries are located in Manhattan, sharing a common strategy of manipulating the ground surfaces to invite pedestrian movement into the projects. In the case of Seamen’s Church Institute Community Center, we propose depressing the FDR Drive to remove its impact as a massive barrier. As of this writing, the condition of FDR Drive’s underbelly remains much the same as it was when the project was designed—dark, barricaded parking that doubles as construction storage—a surprising urban barrier that continues to raise safety issues and disconnect this invaluable waterfront near the Brooklyn Bridge from the rest of Lower Manhattan.

Yeh Design Lab continues to express its perspectives and radical solutions on social and urban issues in Los Angeles, where we are based, through studio topics in the academic environment.