NEW BRIEF_MASSING/PROGRAM_DIAGRAMS

Publication Text:

The proposed project is a local community television station. The intention of the project is to create a platform accessible to members of the local community where they can perform, record, and distribute their performances through a variety of mediums: television, video, web videos. The program would be centered around facilitating performances, documentaries, or instructional videos, live or recorded. The idea is not to compete with major television networks, rather to provide the necessary resources to individuals/groups for one time performances and recordings. The hope is that by providing an open platform for multiple users the result will be a much richer cross section of programming, a physical entity which resembles the virtual spaces created by YouTube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, etc...

In addition to recording the desired performances a network of surveillance cameras would capture and transmit the activity taking place within the station at all times. The impetus behind a constant broadcast is to emphasize the aspects of designing, making, and staging necessary for performance, revealing both process and product. The hope is that by blurring the lines between a intentional performance and unintentional "behind the scenes" performances, it will create a kind of informality as to be less threatening and more accessible to local residents without performance/arts backgrounds.

The design of the TV station itself continues to experiment with the idea of the remix developed earlier in the semester. The siting of the project will be on a small plot of land between South Street and the East River. This location was chosen because it is in close proximity to a large cluster of New York public housing, as well as being the terminus to two public spaces along New York's Lower East Side. One of them is the underside of the public walk underneath the FDR freeway to the Southwest, and the other is the waterfront park directly to the Northeast. The idea of modifying and incorporating found objects into a design has been a consideration in earlier design exercises, and will be continued in the development of the TV station. The existing buildings on the site will be modified to accommodate some of the programmatic needs of the television station, and will be incorporated into the larger design of the overall project. The intention is for the architecture to reflect and promote the idea of reuse. This is done by inhabiting the existing buildings, and also using existing billboard structures to support public display screens on top of the existing buildings. This conceptual element would be something echoed in the functioning of the TV station, the idea being that with limited resources the program would have to reuse and adapt certain production elements such as stage sets for example. The idea is to do little more than to create a vessel to promote and facilitate the production of public performances. The space requirements for this project will be significant, in that it would require: shop facilities, sound stages, studios, storage, equipment rooms, office spaces. This in part is why the existing buildings will be maintained and modified for certain programmatic uses. The elements of the program which have more specific demands will be designed and integrated with the existing buildings.