0. ZAPP 29 RIGHT SIZE 10.25.16 SPREADS 2.12.17

Manhattan Growing
Eran Chen
Manhattan growth over the last decade, like many other major cities around the world, can be characterized by reflexive
adaptation to the ever-growing demand for housing and office space, expressing corporate power and resulting
in the biggest man made sculpture ever created. The qualities that existed on a tree lined street with townhouses
were slowly diminished with midrise and high-rise towers on the same streets. The balance of private and public
spaces was radically distorted and with it, we lost the very rudimentary elements we need as humans. We have been
brainwashed to believe in dogmas sold to us by developers and city planners that higher is always better and that
human interactions and connectivity can be replaced with a gym or lounge or a kid’s playground in some basement
floor. We have to restore all that we lost and do it in a new way, one that accommodate density and vertical living
with fragmentation and porosity, individualism with community, man-made with nature. Now that mankind has
taken full control of our universe, we need to design new types of environments, make buildings that are not deadended
- but rather ongoing ever-changing networks. We need not only to imitate nature to inspire design but also use
design to inspire nature.
Urban Tangle = Messy Urbanism
Public Project via Mitch Joachim with NYU Students and New Lab
Notes on Messy Urbanism by Andrew MacNair
Urban Tangle is an example of Messy Urbanism. Messy Urbanism comes out of the city itself. The city is a messy place. No
matter how hard we try to clean it up it remains messy. The mess is always there. It always comes back. No matter how hard
we try to organize it, sweep it, push it away or inside, messiness is perpetual – and natural. We are messy. Life is messy. The
world is messy. The universe takes the cake for messiness. We are messy inside, messy outside. We are messy on land, in the
ocean, in the air. Math is messy. Science is really messy. Music is messy. Dance - even messier. Basketball is a scramble. And
Football – is the messiest mess.
Architects try so hard to make the world neat. People don’t live like that. Only magazines live like that. And only TV makes
lives – and houses and cities - look neat. No matter how hard we try to clean things up, randomness, disorder, chaos, cacophony,
disjunction, non-sense, un-logic, irrationality always reigns supreme – unless we build a bridge or a skyscraper or
perform brain surgery or go to Mars, then we try very hard to be clear, neat, exact, precise – but all effort for neatness is
constantly being reversed by the ebb-and- flow of accident, happenstance, wear-and-tear, decay, rupture and fracture.
We don’t like to think about messiness. We certainly are conditioned to not like nor want it. To see other people’s dirt, trash
and chaos is disturbing and troublesome. To see a dirty car bothers and irks most of us. To breath dirty and toxic air is horrid.
To live with banging, sirens and honking is seen as Hell. Barking dogs bug us. Crying babies are hushed. Screeching buses,
screaming subways are just bad, bad, bad.
No matter how much we clean, dirt and dust keep coming back. No matter how hard we plan and design neat neighborhoods,
well order new towns, spiffy new cities, we always have to beat back the mess of poverty, , crime, and disease. We
try and try to solve the so-called problems of the poor -- there will always be people who are poor. We try and try to solve
the problems of the slums and so-called slum dwellers, but there will always be slums. We try to clean-up the air and water
here, but they mess it up over there.
There is an end to life. There is an end to earth. There is an end to the sun. There probably is an end to time. There may no
infinity. There may be no answer – and/but only temporary solutions.