A Walk in the Grid

Abstract

How could the design of a regional shopping center reconcile the loss of architectural scale in globalized brownfields? This thesis explores alternative arrangements of form and proportion in search of a new composition that redefines an architectural typology and optimizes its agency for public service. It positions arcades, or mid-door corridors, as the operative mechanism with which architects can organize spaces. When organized in a grid, as a field of intersecting linear massings, architecture obtains an inverted role that defines boundaries from outside-in and therefore encloses exterior rooms of charged voids, stageable for diverse scenarios. Since the key factor is density and not footprint, this experiment seeks to create an instrument to dissolve the single object, subdivide its volume, and return to a scale that could effectively weave the surrounding fabric, thereby instigating alternative strategies and tactics for the city to maintain a high-quality environment as it continues to expand – spatially, socially, and ecologically. This design concept challenges the usual ways in which we shop as well as our perception of commerce as a normative – and isolated – activity; it also serves as a counter monument that critiques contemporary maneuvers of star architects conquering regional sites by implementing their signature symbols in a foreign architectural language that locals could seldom relate. Situated in Sunnyside Queens, an exemplary suburban neighborhood amid overscale developments, this thesis aims to conceive, rather than a universal solution applicable everywhere, a tailored design method with which architecture could begin to engage a particular context, through an empathetically regional gesture.