Project Details

Broadway_A Tactile Perimeter

5 weeks

This semester we participated as a studio with Mary Miss, an Urban and Landscape Architect, and different universities around the United States tackling Broadway through 1,000 Steps. Union Square is home for New York City’s largest Farmer’s Market – the Greenmarket. Madison Square Park is an interaction hub with 50,000 visitors during the week, having a million visitors in a month. The eight blocks between both sites have plazas and marked out areas without an established program or specific use of space. This is therefore a perfect situation where Union Square’s market can be connected to the interactions going on at Madison Square Park along Broadway – though one interactive table. The table begins to come out of the ground and shape different spaces for specific interactions to happen at these marked out areas on Broadway – whether such is purchasing food from a food cart, or eating food while standing and having a step to raise your foot. The table then begins to fold down into a sitting area with back support for lounging and even spreads out into a flat surface for open interactions to happen.  The table begins at Union Square where it maximizes its size as a food stand. This provides the vendors of the Greenmarket with a permanent space to sell their daily products. Simultaneously, food carts are locked up at night in these stands and rolled up Broadway every morning into the largest spaces in each block for the system to continue all the way to Madison Square Park. Market meets Park through one tactile table along Broadway.