Kyeong Jae Lee
YSOA 2013 Spring
Urban Studio Housing + Infrastructure
New York City, United States

The project is a two-fold urban development scenario to salvage the Coney Island from rapidly changing environment. The fourth semester urban studio led by Ed Mitchell interrogates the dual missions of urban design, continuity and the change. The objective of the project was to establish an urban framework that reinforces the image of the city and supplies the current and the future housing demand in the age of coastal adaptation.

While seeking to generate a comprehensive and convincing landscape phasing scenario, we also focused on the architectural/infrastructural strategy to prevent rising water from damaging the inhabitation, and furthermore, to benefit from it. We decided to adopt contrasting strategies for the beach side and the creek side: retreat and resist on the beach side and accept and cultivate on the creek side with a new addition of a circulation layer lifted fifteen feet above the original ground which we termed the Life Screen. A matrix of grid lines derived from existing infrastructure sliced by diagonal view corridors connecting the monuments were employed to shape residential volumes.

In collaboration with Rushayn Yen and Aisha Pasha