Permeated by a Ferrissian dream, we envisioned a City of Captive Zoning; not as a trite recapitulation of a metropolitan archipelago, as in Koolhaas’ varying architectural merveilles, but as a territory of embryonic conditions. The specificity of the site occupying the adjacent lot from an international territory of the UN Headquarters established a hinging condition in relation to its locality and the urbanism of Manhattan. Beginning with our initial massing studies, we attempted to design a system whereby one could fragment the bulk into smaller, individual units that can be re-aggregated into a form that subsumes the Ferrissian prism without colliding with it. A mathematical antecedent, which generated the inflicted coil, was used in this aggregate strategy. As the result, the dendrite tower acts as an interdependent structural system to create what is essentially a leaning A-frame structure. Hence, the Neo-Manhattan skyscraper is a relational structure rather than a compositional one, whereby density and form produce unyielding efficiencies of urban housing. A typical suburban housing typology of “one plot per owner system” was re-appropriated here into the culture of urban-density. The Neo-Manhattan Tower, therefore, seeks to accommodate the singular amidst the collective while maintaining the identity of each programmatic function.
