Manhattan - Use zoning and mixed use buildings

Present use distribution
In preventing the interfusion of urban functions, use zoning reinforced the homogeneity of each district and promoted their differentiation. However, where living and working environments were once considered mutually exclusive, such distinctions are now increasingly blurred. Where the city historically tended toward a centrifugal condition of functionally distinct enclaves, cultural trends and issues of sustainability now point toward a functional ambiguity in which living and working occupy the same or proximate space; toward a centripetal and compacted form of mixed use environment.

The John Hancock Center
The seminal example of the multi-use skyscraper was to be created in 1960’s Chicago rather than New York. The John Hancock Center stacked functions, one upon the other over ninety seven stories; commercial office, residential, parking, retail, all contained within Fazlur Kahn’s unifying exoskeleton. Its condition of isolation from neighbouring forms contributes to, if not defines, the building’s iconic status. By virtue of extreme height and apparent self-sufficiency, it removes itself from context and asserts its independence. As a container for a diverse programme of uses it approximates to Hood’s ‘City under a Single Roof’.

The City Rotated
The apparent introversion of the Hancock Center takes on a different perspective, however, if the tower is conceived of as the product of use zoning rules. But rather than being horizontally arranged, the sequence of uses is rotated to form a series of vertically-stacked layers. The tower is conceived as an object which has been extruded through the virtual strata of this use zoning structure. The horizontally extended layers suggest the possibility of additional mixed use towers more or less proximate to the original - a city of John Hancocks.

JHC in Manhattan - distribution 1
To test this proposition we imagine that the John Hancock Center ‘returns’ to Manhattan (its natural home) settles west of midtown and multiplies in accordance with a new zoning law specifically designed to facilitate its reproduction. As the condition of each tower is one of isolation, the only variable is the distance which separates one Hancock from another. At one tower per three blocks the assembled Hancocks appear ‘sensibly’ spaced; the distribution approximates to our conception of the City of Towers. However, the spatial separation brings with it programmatic disjunction; the towers register as functionally independent.

JHC in Manhattan - distribution 2
Additional towers inhabit the area. A density of one Hancock per two blocks is reached. While the proximity between forms begins to suggest some programmatic, and perhaps even physical, connectivity, the spaces between them lose their evocation of the tree populated and verdured Corbusian landscape. The forms neither occupy such a continuous space nor are they close enough to enclose and structure space and to infuse it with programme.

JHC in Manhattan - distribution 3
The Hancocks experience the architectural equivalent of the summer of love. The offspring crowd into the area, two occupying every urban block. The close proximity of the towers hovers on the edge of credibility; the canyon street of the early twentieth century is given renewed definition. At the same time, however, the clustered towers approximate to the vertical zoning structure. A certain richness of urban programme is evoked. We are left with two ostensibly irreconcilable ambitions; how to build high and at the same time achieve proximity between forms?

The city as a folded structure of uses
The zoning structure suggested by the example of the John Hancock Center is, however, too rigid, too restricting. If the principle of vertical zoning is to extend across Manhattan, or at least its dense districts, some diversity in the combinations of functions is demanded. The model for a city of mixed use development requires some variation between different locations, manifest as a use zoning structure characterised by a non-linear sectional geometry.

The City under a Single Roof
Faced with increasing congestion in the city’s streets, mixed use development had been posited in the early years of the twentieth century as a new trajectory for Manhattan’s urban future. This evolution was inseparable from that of the skyscraper and the possibilities afforded by the sheer volume available within its envelope. Raymond Hood’s ‘City under a Single Roof’ proposed huge developments covering three or more blocks and containing uses to support whole ‘industries’. The potential for the Manhattan skyscraper to accommodate mixed use programmes remained, however, largely a subject of speculation.

Horizontal use distribution
During the mid Eighteenth century and for primarily economic but also social reasons, different types of land use are consolidated in different parts of Manhattan. The functions of the city are arranged in a horizontal sequence of internally homogeneous districts. The mono-functional character of these districts is defended by their occupants against intrusion by ‘nuisance’ uses, particularly industrial into residential areas. A primary objective of the 1916 zoning law was to legislate against such intrusion.

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