Timber City

Yinqiang Liu, Marie Thorogood, Bau-Kuan Yeh
M Arch, 2nd Year Spring, 2019

New York City’s astronomical land prices force most residents to live in spaces just small enough to fit the bare essentials. While vertically-stacked buildings tend to be the most affordable, we found that repositioning the arrangement without volume changes would revive New Yorkers’ dwelling quality. We’d like to see a horizontal building with a stacked core of retail units connected to the residential units. The empty courtyard skylight design creates more visual connections between residents and customers, and the horizontal layout decreases time people spend in elevators.