Will Cao vol. 2 [ design / spaces ][ land / water ]

d e si g n / sp a c es

W W II L LL L C CA AO O C CO O LL U UM MB B II A A G G SS A A PP PP

des i g n / sp a c e s

WILL CAO COLUMBIA GSAPP

air / earth

common / ground

ontologies

SCHOOL(S) YARD, HARLEM + MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, NYC critic: LINDY ROY Morningside Park sits at the crux of barriers; some natural and defined over millennia, such as the vein of Manhattan schist running along the length of the park, others administrative and yet to be reconciled, such as the largely racially-based grading of surrounding neighborhoods by the Home Owners Loan Corporation over much of the early 20th century. Along 122nd Street, the unfortunate practice of redlining neighborhoods is replicated through school districting, where neighboring public, private, and charter schools demonstrate radically different student performance.

2 - 19

To begin to overcome an inhospitable history and landscape, the first step of the intervention ameliorates the steep drop in elevation between P.S.36 and the former Horace Mann-Lincoln School of Teachers’ College. Each building receives a frontage above and below the generated surface, allowing opportunities for outdoor play and shelter for shared amenities over and under formerly impassible ground.

form / work MONTESSORI SCHOOL, LOWER EAST SIDE, NYC critic: KARLA ROTHSTEIN

20 - 35

Public education has focused on implementing benchmarks and standardized testing in order to assess performance and parity of schools. Data can only serve as an indicator, however, and the greater impression a school has as a community institution cannot be summarized by math scores and reading levels alone. Although the involvement of metrics was intended to promote greater equality in school performance, these approaches instead reinforce class and cultural divisions through the creation of separate special education and English as a second language classrooms, and have been counterproductive towards embracing neurodiversity. Through changes in curriculum and architecture, schools might instead serve as “soft formworks,” providing support where needed, but ultimately allowing children to become independent beings shaped by their innate strengths and natural integrity.

town / house AFFORDABLE HOUSING, SOUTH BRONX, NYC critic: MIMI HOANG

land / water ecologies

Belied by the hundreds of townhouses that were developed in the Bronx at the turn of century, the promise or “American Dream” of home-owning and home-making was not extended to the many black and brown residents that arrived to the Bronx through the HOPE IV program. Surviving fragments of this earlier era of speculation remain scattered among many blocks of the Bronx, even as many were razed by Robert Moses for highways or otherwise endangered by the flooding these infrastructures exacerbated.

Despite the value of its scale and interface with the street, the townhouse plan evidences the act of finding and making a home too readily warped by uncritical ownership and overeager speculation, emblemized by the parti wall. Air is pushed within to create semi-outdoor terraces shared between units in the same way townhouses can create a “close” in between, functioning as both the structural “core” and programmatic “cœur” of each building.

38 - 47

shore / line ESTUARY REGENERATION, SOUTH END, BRIDGEPORT, CT critic: RACHELY ROTEM partner: BURCU TURKAY Although power lines across Connecticut tap into the waste-to-energy and gas plants in the South End of Bridgeport, the consequences of filling the original coastal salt marshes with toxic waste and paving them into parking lots fall upon the neighborhood’s mostly Black and Latinx human residents and its dwindling non-human inhabitants. High flood insurance premiums discourage investment, extending flood vulnerability and strained access to affordable and nutritious food. Rewilding vacant parcels and underutilized parking lots restores the flexibility for water to flow both out and in, reviving an ecology that supported and will support sustenance, allowing the South End to stay afloat both in presence and absence of a flooding event.

48 - 67

l a nd

wat er

Belied by the hundreds of townhouses that were developed in the Bronx at the turn of century, the promise or “American Dream” of home-owning and home-making was not extended to the many black and brown residents that arrived to the Bronx through the HOPE IV program.

Surviving fragments of this earlier era of speculation remain scattered among many blocks of the Bronx, even as many were razed by Robert Moses for highways or otherwise endangered by the flooding these infrastructures exacerbated.

Despite the value of its scale and interface with the street, the townhouse plan evidences the act of finding and making a home too readily warped by uncritical ownership and overeager speculation, emblemized by the parti wall. Air is pushed within to create semi-outdoor terraces shared between units in the same way townhouses can create a “close” in between, functioning as both the structural “core” and programmatic “cœur” of each building.

t o w n / h o u se

robert moses’ highways

highway as barrier

river as barrier

5 /10/15 min walk isochrones

access of people & water allowed over highway / through landscape / to river

wing plan & details

plan oblique

1’ = 1/4” model

Although power lines across Connecticut tap into the waste-to-energy and gas plants in the South End of Bridgeport, the consequences of filling the original coastal salt marshes with toxic waste and paving them into parking lots fall upon the neighborhood’s mostly Black and Latinx human residents and its dwindling non-human inhabitants. High flood insurance premiums discourage investment, extending flood vulnerability and strained access to affordable and nutritious food. Rewilding vacant parcels and underutilized parking lots restores the flexibility for water to flow both out and in, reviving an ecology that supported and will support sustenance, allowing the South End to stay afloat both in presence and absence of a flooding event.

sh o re / l in e

vulnerabilities: ecological sensitivity index of shoreline renters and owners in bridgeport

vacant parcels > estuary

FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area Expensive insurance is required to develop or significantly remodel beyond this line, complicating revitalization after deindustrialization.

New Bassick High School Originally estuarine parcels have been cleared for a $115 to $124 million new building despite flooding risk and community concerns.

ashore / afloat

mobilize / reconfigure kitchen barges

20” SLR by 2050

high tide 3 ft. typical waves

low tide

boardwalks necklace; retain

belvederes spiral; panorama

intertidal grasses & oysters

macroalgae & mya bivalves

oxidized coarse sediment

coarse sediment

barges reconfigure; mobilize biofouling & barnacles fine sediment

below the water

above the water

barges

boardwalks

education

recreation

dining

classroom