The proposal is an adaptive reuse development of the Barclay Hotel. The hotel will expand into a mixed-use complex for filming on-site with mixed program pieces and event spaces distributed throughout its six stories and the roof. The program pieces will be implemented based on combinations of formal insertion and deletion. Architectural prosthetics will be inserted to tie together relationships which were previously unrecognized. New program will be inserted, and pieces of the interior will be removed to generate new situations and spatial opportunities to call attention to the historic nature of the building. 

The project asks, “Why are buildings preserved? Once a building has outlived its use, why do we desire for it to remain? Is it merely signographic? Is it a container for memory? What can be done to give use value to something whose value has been lost?” 

The assertion is that the old is necessarily killed by the new. There is never a case of new architecture without a piece of the old being exchanged away. Even if an old edifice is not physically touched, the atmosphere of nostalgia is altered by an update to the landscape. It is necessary to embrace this inevitability and to synthesize the new and existing architectures to form a coherent whole.