- Times Square: where smart becomes dumb

In the world of capitalism, buildings’ values are determined on how much inhabitable space they have - which is to say, Total floor Area. Based on this logic, slab has been put in higher hierarchy among other elements in architecture since modernism, and a notion of stacking floor slabs has been the smartest technology of increasing the building value for maximizing the total floor area while minimizing the amount of structures and envelope area. However, there is a place where this logic becomes dumb, even the place itself is driven by capitalism: Times Square. Here, a value of building envelope as a site for billboards exceeds a value of floor. The average rate of billboard space in Times Square is almost three times more expensive than the average rate of office space in Manhattan. The most extreme example for this could be One Times Square which is located at 42nd Street and Broadway. The building was originally built as a headquarter for The New York Times, but it was abandoned soon after its built. Now the entire envelope is covered with billboards. Since it is impossible to have windows on walls where signage covers and also because leasing the entire envelope for billboards could gain more revenue than leasing the tenant floors, the tower currently has tenants only on the first three floors and the rest 22 floors are vacant. This example clearly shows the limitation of the current paradigm of architecture. Thus this project challenges this hierarchy by taking a closer look at the surface property of architecture.

- Duck, Decorated shed, or...?

We cannot talk about the relationship between architecture and billboards without mentioning Robert Venturi and Scott Brown. Their notion of “decorated shed” is clearly shown in their proposal for Times Square Information Center, which could be perceived as a big apple as a billboard on top of a banal box-shaped building. They have criticized “duck” by architecture being a dictator over other disciplines, however, this project criticizes “decorated shed” by architecture being too autonomous or indifferent about other disciplines. Here, I want to propose in-between condition of duck and decorated shed, something in which billboard and architecture being semi-autonomous and create an effect as a whole.

The basic strategy of this project is subdividing a building mass into numbers of smaller volumes to increase the surface area for advertisements. Since there’s a need for space to enable people to locate themselves to see advertisements, tapering each volume is introduced to make the ground level as an extended street level, thus people can walk in and see the advertisements inside.

LED pixels cover the entire envelope. Size and density of the pixels change according to different viewing distances: lower density pixels with larger projection area on the upper level where viewing distance is relatively long, and higher resolution with smaller projection area on the lower level where distance between person and surface gets shorter. Whereas a conventional billboard only functions with a certain viewing distance and it only conveys single information, this system works with multiple viewpoints and people will acquire different information depending on the distance from the surface.

Each leg houses vertical circulation system that leads to upper level where the inner skin is pushed out and the floor plates get bigger to house program such as movie theaters.

The space inside the inner skin is totally opposite in its attribute from the outer skin on which information is thoroughly commodified. Noises and steam will come out from some of the legs that reach to subway station underneath, each aperture on the skin will convey the sense of activity inside, and the sunlight comes through the slit.