Combing Rockaway

Combing Rockaway’s infrastructural and geological formation postulates a typological contention of combining the convenience of rational urban planning with the propriety and aesthetics of architectural specificity.

The masterplan is composed of an endless repetition of 30-to-60-foot-wide bars intersecting the Rockaway Peninsula. The bars were conceived as over-sized breakwaters interspersed with tidal inlets that, together, mitigate the effects of storm surges and maintain the ecology of the marshlands in Jamaica bay. Each bar with a hammerhead breakwater morphs into a single island due to sand shoaling and the eb and flow of water between the ocean and the bay. Urban voids assume a monumental presence at the joints of intersecting bars—forming subtracted nodes which become grand landscapes within the perimeter of the built but bleed onto the terrain of the unbuilt.

GRADUATE, STUDIO IV, SPRING 15
SUBTRACTION STUDIO
CRITIC: ADAM FRAMPTON