2000 UK Award Part 1
A Skyscraper in New York

A double series of sensitive structural fibers receive and integrate diverse layers of programmatic and site-specific information through a process of material proliferation, collaboration, and mutual accommodation, to build a porous skyscraper typology into the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

Samples abstracted from Antoni Gaudí’s structural explorations and principles of proliferation from the structural behavior of bones are studied in order to generate a set of rules to create a system of organization, able to populate the sky and to accommodate programs in that process.

The distribution of hotel components responds to the emergent structural conditions by stratifying the organization in three different longitudinal promenades (ground, sky, and mid-promenade), where public facilities are located (lounges, auditoria, cinemas, restaurants), and from where other hotel programs (unit rooms, shared facilities, minor gardens) are accessed.

A set of views, noise, accessibility, and sunlight exposure diagrams progressively inform the structure and establish different mixtures of proximity and access to commodities within the hotel infrastructure, systematically integrating a multiplicity of completely disparate functions in a single urban body.