Overbuilding
The second half of the nineteenth century witnesses a significant change in real estate practices, the advent of framed construction techniques and the introduction of a viable elevator technology. Architectures of unprecedented form and scale rise as vertical extrusions from lots of increasingly large area. By the turn of the twentieth century the downtown area of the city is being likened to a mountain range and its streets to canyons, congested with pedestrians and motor vehicles and deprived of light and air. The term ‘overbuilding’ is assigned to this new condition and pressure is exerted from diverse quarters to curtail it.
|
1916 - plan
The 1916 ordinance also divides the plan of Manhattan into districts or zones with defined boundaries. Rules operate upon every lot within a zone. They stipulate which uses are permitted, how much of the lot can be covered by building and how the volume of the building can be distributed. Zones adjacent to each other have, by definition, different rules in operation. Consequently, the practice of zoning has the effect of generating difference in the forms and functions of the city. The homogeneity of the Commissioners’ Plan is carved up and formalised into a heterogeneous arrangement of districts.
|
Maximum Envelope
In an article entitled ‘Zoning and the Envelope of the Building’ (1923) the architect Harvey Wiley Corbett speculates upon the effect of zoning upon the task of building design. He recognises that the ordinance prescribes a maximum envelope within which the building form must be contained. Accompanied by the first draft of Hugh Ferriss’ famous illustrations, Corbett characterises the design method as a process of subtraction from this virtual mass. Ferriss later refines and develops his renderings, likening the mass to clay, a material analogy which reinforces the idea of the design task as sculpture.
|
A City of Towers
The 1916 law is perceived to have failed to effectively limit the volume of permissible development. Many critiques are aligned to an alternative urban model of horizontally separated and vertically-extended forms: A City of Towers. Le Corbusier, Hugh Ferriss and others publish utopian projections for Manhattan based upon these principles. Within the market driven culture of private land ownership, these proposals are, however, paper exercises. In 1929 Raymond Hood (prophetically) speculates upon how the City of Towers might be realised through the imposition of an alternative set of zoning rules.
|
1961
Not until the late 1950’s is the vision of Manhattan as a City of Towers converted into proposals for a new zoning law. In 1959 the Seagram Building is imported onto Park Avenue as prototype. The new law is passed in 1961. Its rules relate the volume of building to a multiple of the lot size, the floor area ratio (FAR) Significantly, FAR bonuses are allowed in return for the creation of public space or arcades at ground level. This rule promotes the ‘tower and plaza’ development model; the accumulation of these forms will, it is anticipated, liberate Manhattan from the spatial legacy of its constraining grid.
|
Zoning as Subtraction
In imposing restriction upon that which can be developed, the zoning law implies a preceding condition. If, as Corbett observed, the 1916 law defines a maximum envelope, then there is a prior state which existed before it was implemented, a condition of maximisation taking the form of a vertical extrusion from a lot. The zoning laws prescribe different ways to carve out of this mass, to define a volume which is to be removed and, its reciprocal, a residuum, the development envelope. Historically this method of subtraction has been applied to achieve greater separation between forms.
|
Past, current and future zoning
Zoning in 1916 is coarse-grained. The number of districts demarcated by the law are few; common rules governing use and bulk restriction apply across large areas, unresponsive to local conditions, to the city’s heterogeneity. Zoning today is fine-grained, the scale of districts small, the number of zoning categories extensive, including ‘special’ districts to accommodate the exceptions to the exceptions. Where once zoning functioned in a culture which anticipated change, it now perpetuates current conditions. Could alternative strategies be developed which restore Manhattan’s capacity to generate unique urban events?
|
1916 - section
New York’s first comprehensive planning (‘zoning’) ordinance is passed in 1916. It consists of rules governing the use and form of new building in the city. Controls are imposed upon the disposition of accommodation permissible on a lot. The ‘set-back’ rule imposes an inclined plane originating from the centre of the street or avenue, the angle of the plane being a function of the width of the thoroughfare. Development cannot extend beyond this envelope, the only exception being an allowance for a tower without height restriction covering an area not exceeding 25% of the lot.
|
1811
In 1806 a Commission is appointed to lay out new streets on Manhattan Island. The plan published in 1811 is the precursor to all subsequent events which will give form to the modern city. The gridiron extends north from the limits of the existing settlement and is defined by 12 north-south running avenues and 155 east-west oriented streets. The geometry of the blocks thereby defined anticipates their subdivision into lots 100 feet deep and with 25 feet of frontage. The natural landscape of Manhattan is sliced into seemingly endless orthogonal modules of real estate.
|
|
|
| |
|
Site
design by Boho Media |
|
|
|
|
|
