For the creation of a new lm district in Albuquerque, we avoided trying to
contain the complexity of an urban intervention into one gesture; this is not
architecture, it is urban design. Rather than designing a megastructure that
embraces bigness and promote isolation, we sought to implement systems
that would result in a new urban district. These systems revolved around the
creation of both buildings and streets. The void between the buildings
produce a network of streets that are considered at the same architectural or
"human" scale. A hierarchy of urban space is established between the street
and square (akin to that found in medieval cities); the street facilitates the
circulation of humans between programs and the streets bleed into a larger
square for recreation. To avoid the enervation of our urban space, we gave
primacy to the space between the existing boiler shop and machine shop.
This "transfer table" becomes the heart of the composition that lies in the
intersection of East-West circulation as well as the circulation through the
North-South passages.