iHB:BX
Harlem - The Bronx
ENYA Competition
New York City, NY
Exhibition and Publication Fall 2010
Design Team:
Diego Calderon
Jose Fernando Lizarraga
Luis Othón Villegas
How can you create an infrastructure that is intended to be an incubator for the arts? How can this infrastructure become space? How can this space foster experimentation and innovation for new art forms positively in a community development?
Art promotion programs and participatory communities are dependant on the accountability for adequate and proper infrastructures. It requires clear semantics; and an iconic formality, but most of all it must foster a desire for contextual change.
Icon HB:BX (iHB:BX) is conceptualized as an infrastructure that cultivates and theorizes an environment for constant experimentation. It responds for a continuous performance, one that never ends and its susceptible for constant change. It is literally a needlepoint at the middle of the bridge that never touches the surroundings but will become a strategy for positive contextual change. In this sense iHB:BX represents change, a positive icon, the one that provokes side effects. The bridge, its accesses, and the context are left untouched; however untouchable, the surroundings are meant to experiment changes in the future only by themselves.
The iHB:BX is a provocation, it is intended to be a constant performance, a real artistic form of experimentation; an event that never ends and its never the same. Art in scene is always there.
1. The iHB:BX will be positioned at the center of the bridge. It will work as a magnet between the two boundaries: Harlem and The Bronx. It is a link and a place visible from everywhere
2. The program organizes in a particular scheme: CDC (Career Development Center) at the bottom, APF (Art Promotion Facility) in the middle and ACF (Art Creation Facility) in the tower. CDC responds to demands for logistics, simple and reliable.
3. Program scheme is brought to a diagram of uses: APF must be shown at the platform, always as ground and close to CDC and ACF. ACF keeps changing, constant interaction and performance, always visible, eventual and provocative
4. The same way a scaffolding works, every platform in the tower moves up and down for interaction. It represents change, performance and new platforms for art experimentation: theatrical; constant movement for the event put into place
uot;MsoNormal">5. Each platforms connects with the tower, the iHB:BX is joined by a structure from the bridge and by elevators to the different platforms and plinth
6. Moving platforms runs up down the iHB:BX, the tower performs every time and it’s seen from everywhere. Views are exploded to be the main attraction for both inside the moving platform and to the moving platforms
7. No intervention on the borders. The iHB:BX becomes the intervention; only one element generates and foster contextual change. Art performs for change, for human interaction and injection of positive effects.
8. A main gathering space is created on top of the plinth. A new public space is accessed through elevator and stairs from the middle of the bridge. The space is open to everyone. Through the trajectory below, people will enjoy constant performances. Art is put into place.
