Veiled Volumes: Rethinking NYC’s Storage Landscape
Long Island City, NYCFall 2017, Syracuse University | School of Architecture
Critic: Greg Corso
This proposal explores the interstitial and leftover spaces and asks the following questions: How do we deal with our stuff, and where do we store it? In the 1960s, storage units were meant to temporarily absorb the possessions of those in transition: moving, divorcing or marrying, or dealing with a death in the family. But now, people, especially living in NYC are struggling to find enough space for all the stuff they have. They choose to put them in storage-units where these stuff are kept safe from fire, wind and thieves. Now 1 out of every 10 households in the country rents a unit.
As I looked at how people deal with their stuff, and where they store it in domestic and urban settings, I was intrigued by the variety of the unplanned in-between spaces that was used to put the stuff in. Moving from the analysis to my design, I borrowed the idea of using the interstitial space to to keep the long term storage. In my design, the long term storage is kept in between the building mass and the veil that surrounds the strategic parts of the building mass.
The mesh that drapes from the certain surfaces of the building mass bulges and stretches around the geometric forms by creating these interstitial spaces for the long term storage. The materiality of the mesh is both tough and delicate at the same time. Looking at the building from the courtyard, the veil forms a visual haze around the building, diffusing the building’s solid literally into something indeterminate. Its boundary becomes harder to discern and develops a strange simultaneous quality of form and formlessness.
