Archinect
Mustafa Faruki

Mustafa Faruki

New York, NY, US

anchor

Skinnymaasterplaan

1. Skinnymasterplan. The project envisions a revised plan for West 118th Street in Upper Manhattan. As its provocation, this plan takes the hyper-cracked- out nature of a series of walks down this street, taken at different times of the day. These walks are anything but identical—to the contrary, the “ground realities” of the street alter, sometimes dramatically, an otherwise simple stroll. Opening and closing gates, locked and unlocked buildings, bouts of fear, fits of paranoia, and teeny-tiny humps of dogshit are generously doled out by Father Time to a street whose identity recalls something about as stable as a tranny-Jack Bourne. “Its just not fair!”—screams W118th, mangled and twisted into a chronologically crumpled pretzel. Street-life never is.


2. How west 118th street got its groove back. The project transforms W118th, from Barnard College to Morningside Drive, into a tabula rasa. Yes. Just like that. A new, continuous street emerges—it burrows into one end of the Barnard Library and crashes out of the other. It flies high above Broadway, and then takes a dip into Room 300, Mathematics Hall. Undeterred by pseudo-formidable-neo-classical-Columbia-kitsch, W118th winds a happy wooden bridge in front of the Business School, bangs (simultaneously) into Avery and Schermerhorn, and finds a home in the 6th floor office of urban history Professor Kenneth Jackson. Here the street leaps into the air, as staid stand-lifts ferry streetwalkers onwards to Morningside Park. At the end of it all, W118th turns around to survey the damage, but only for a second: time, after all, is money.


3. W118th found & lost. With a new, sometimes high-, sometimes low-street in place, the stage is set. Now that W118th has its groove back, it can begin to get its own back. Scattered throughout the project are subtle add-and-subtract-ons { d }; throughout the day, these are deployed, re-deployed, and un-deployed. The street connects and disconnects from the city at paces and places of its own choosing. Suck it, city. You say you want an intersection? Take a number, hon.

 
Read more

Status: School Project
Location: W 118th St, Manhattan