New York City Aquarium & Public Waterfront
New York City Aquarium & public waterfront, Arch Out Loud Competition, 2016
The aquarium is more than an simple park with exhibition houses spread all over the surface. It become a multi-level-programmatic-building, which provide a multi-directionnal course for the visitors. As a first step, we were seeking for a unify project which can assemble various programs and activity in one building to develop a new social place for all the neighboorhood. To do so, the building deal with all kind of program in the same system.
A simple grid unite various program from private to very public ones. Workers, visitors, people from the neighboorhood as well as tourists will meet in the buidling which will become a new icon in Long Island.
In addition to organise and put together many programs and people, the strucural grid let to developp an aquarium with many and various achitectural experiences. In one moment, we are looking a fish pond on a footbridge under the hall. In another one, we are in an aquarium galleries, sometimes toward the interior, sometimes toward the exterior of the builidng. In a last one, we are discovering an aquatic show on a rooftop patio, with the New York skyline on the background.
This multitude of situations reflects the variety of point of view on differents aquariums : of the top, of the bottom, from one side, from the other, from the interior, from the exterior…
The pedestrian course is designed as a double-revolution pass, where the visitors are going up on the builing to reach the roof, befor going down through different passageways or footbridge. The entrance of the aquarium is situated at the lower square under the hall. This difference of level create a space without view on the urban context to immerse the visitor in the aquarium exhibition in the first place. After being inside the building, he re-discovers step by step the surronding urban area.
The public waterfront follow the design of the aquarium shape to create a half mineral half vegetal public space around the aquarium. In some case, the same structural frame has been copy to create architectural Landmark: the observatory tower to see and be seen, the footbridge to shortcut the dock, the small lighthouse to light the square in front of the aquarium. In addition to the aquarium program, the building receive other purpose to transform this place as a new place for the urban life (naval school, art galleries, restaurants, shops, librairies, free offices, co-working spaces, swimming pool…). The tunnel form of the building reflect the visual link between New York and Bronx or Queens neighborhood.
