REpark: Adapting Long Island’s commercial infrastructure
Juror summary: analyzes layers of existing spatial networks across eastern L.I. with an expressive design for a novel housing type for seniors built on shopping mall parking lots.
Responding to the stated statistical challenges for diverse housing provisions, car dependency and congestion reduction, public equity, and young and elderly needs, our proposal to revitalize Long Island is adaptive, incremental and at the same time revolutionary.
We move beyond labels of new and old, suburb and downtown to focus on the conditions on the ground. The proposal modifies emergent patterns and co-opts current predicaments as sustainably, as economically and as flexibly as possible. The proposal identifies a lightly built network of symbiotic densities in the underutilized territories of commercial and retail parking lots and links them to the existing downtowns by subsequent improvements to the infrastructure. Within this light network we are proposing the addition of sustainable, flexible modular units that tread lightly on the parking surface and maximize the givens. This addition provides complementary programs to these territories, engendering ‘ecological’ systems where different programs – housing, commerce, retail, etc. – foster each other in closer proximity. The downtowns – left behind by the spatial and infrastructural demands on the late 20th century – are in turn inscribed into this emergent network by means infrastructure – buses first, light rail next.
We have invested in one scenario within our light network proposal that validates and encompasses our goals. This scenario capitalizes on two overlooked factors that are essential aspects of Long Island: the current, and soon to be marginalized, elderly population and said emergent territories of under-utilized commercial strip malls. As one element of the light network, we call for the addition of modular assisted living facilities over selected parking lots of commercial malls – such as the Walt Whitman mall at the intersection of 110 and the Jericho turnpike. This addition will begin to constitute a light network as it co-opts the emergent dynamics of large-scale car infrastructure and commercial territories.
As stated above, each piece of the light network will bring about ‘ecological’ systems where symbiotic densities and transactions will afford and contribute to the increase of infrastructural services – creating links to other points in the emergent network, the train stations and the downtown by an increase of bus service and eventually a light rail.
Key themes: retrofitting shopping centers, innovative building types, housing choice for seniors, new mass transit networks
Collaborators: Scalar Architecture, Julio Salcedo, Elizabeth MacWillie, Jarman Acevedo