STack city

Rezoning Coney Island, Brooklyn
with Jon Swendris
Critic: Prof. Aniket Shahane (Yale)
Year: 2013

Responding to Coney Island’s urban crisis escalated by projected rising sea levels, this proposal is an interpretation of the decay of the island; the main hypothesis of this project creatively uses the notion of sacrifice in favor of contributing to a new ideal and enlivened type of city. By relocating and adding programmatic necessities, condemning certain parts of the city and even erasing urbanistically awkward fabric, we encourage denser reconfigurations in what ultimately remains as significant architectural and social complexes. What eventually becomes vacant and replaced by the continuously expanding body of water is sought as at the same time as programmed poche, figural structure and ecological space that supports these future configurations on a new terra firma above rising sea levels.

We are not designing a city as much as we are controlling and cultivating its natural growth. In this way, we seek to understand how successful cities grow and prosper and how Coney Island has come to fruition. We cannot expect a top-down, heavy-handed drastic reformation of the Island to be ultimately successful; Coney Island has an identity that has been developed for hundreds of years and regardless of imminent sea level rise this identity is not something to be forgotten. By working through rigorous, positivist scientific methods, minimizing unnecessary variables and understanding the problems at hand we will be able to arrive at a phased plan for development. Using the building types and respective ratios of Coney’s existing fabric and reconfiguring density, built/open space ratios, and the height of the ground plane a flood resistant Coney will develop over time naturally.

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Published in Retrospecta 2012-2013
Featured in Big Plans exhibition 2012