With rising water levels from global warming and the boundary of the water’s surface gradually encroaching on that of landscape, low-lying urban habitats like Red Hook are now periodically awash with tidal surges that make it difficult, literally- and figuratively-speaking, for both biotic and abiotic systems to attach or remain attached to place. SURFACE orients to these fluctuating surfaces of ground1 and water and a new architectural/landscape order of material surfaces constructed in relation to them (see Figure 1). Such an approach will ‘afford’2  the interconnection of environment-specific perception, action, and performance needed for a new, more sustainable type of place attachment and existence to develop and root itself.

The ‘affordances’ provided by SURFACE’s surface layouts define environmental perception and influence subsequent action. Freshwater is collected horizontally throughout the project and transported vertically to a common collection point, making its cycle visible (see Figure 2). Stepping terraces and ramps create a new semi-public space through indigenous plant species that ‘map sectionally’ to the prior natural landscape (see Figure 1) and define the roof of the wood manufacturing center below. The corridors of the residential units above are open on one side to partially engage the public space, allow for sunlight, and provide cross-ventilation (see Figures 3, 4). Below the roof sits a community loggia space of spectacular views. Interactions between programmatic surfaces help communal development to happen naturally through everyday connections between inhabitants, belvedere-like elements, and ecosocial life-systems flowing by.3 

Additionally, SURFACE’s materiality plays a critical role in producing beneficial biotic and abiotic action. A tectonic system of cross-laminated timber (CLT) provides a comprehensive, layered, and sustainable solution that meets urban building codes innovatively. Openings are cut out of repetitive CLT bearing-walls to accommodate program. Marine plywood surfaces (like CLT’s at another scale) de-laminate to interact with the body (see Detail Section C). Materiality is carefully designed in relation to the fluctuating ground- and water-planes (see Detail Section B), with both surface type and arrangement playing an important role in ‘rooting’ structure in an unsteady habitat.

“The surface of a substance has a characteristic texture, reflectance, and layout… The perception of layout takes the place of the perception of depth or space in traditional terminology” (Gibson 1979). SURFACE frames environmental perception by carefully deploying surface interrelationships, extending site to its complex horizons, and strengthening interconnectivities between inhabitants and place---‘above and below the surface’---while working to foster more diverse and productive communal/ecological systems, natural and social, with wood as the primary medium of these energetic exchanges.

1 “Ground is the basic persisting surface of the environment. It is the surface of support, the terrain, the extending to the horizon,” J.J. Gibson (1979) The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, pp. 307.

2 We use the term ‘affordance’ in J.J. Gibson’s ecological sense as the product of the interaction between the (social) individual and the environment where each interaction can potentially impact an individual’s competence, knowledge and identity as well as adjacent micro-ecologies.

3 The project learns from systems of belvederes or architecturally framed views found in Italian Renaissance garden design in relation to the systems of gravity-powered water channels and fountains that animate those views.