Ground In / Between: The United Nations headquarters of sustainability, New York City

The UN-headquarters for sustainability will be the control centre in the race to take the leap towards a more sustainable development, with the responsibility of conveying sustainable solutions and policies. It will host the organization of multidisciplinary activities aiming to raise awareness on the subject, inform, motivate and inspire people. Its infrastructure would be the main platform for this message to come across, meaning that by all means the building has to be at reach to society. From an urban point of view, a strong synergy with the immediate context and integration with the Manhattan Midtown East its vital to ensure that people is attracted to the building. A clear accessibility from both, the city and the river side promenade is equally important. Currently, the different programs addressing a more sustainable development are too fragmented and divided over all the UN councils and many separate local organizations worldwide. The UNEC will be a confluence centre at an international, national and local level, attracting individuals, institutions, corporations and governments. Acting as a role model for the world, the building for this reason must set the conditions for integration and collaborative work among the different entities of knowledge and institutions, by seamlessly combining them in under one green roof. The convergence of disciplines and stakeholders will be empowered by an architecture that facilitates informal encounters as a guiding principle. Openness and spatial continuity are the main qualities of the program distributed around an open central space connecting the different areas of the buildings. However, the distribution of circulations, with strategic control points (security), allow for certain areas of the building to function in an independent manner. With the atmosphere of a public domain, the building creates new landscapes for social interaction (courtyard and garden roof) on a ground “ In-between”, a ground for mediation. Thus, the value of this graduation project lies in being a design assignment for a project that deals with the question of sustainability from a extremely important stand point, which is not only minimizing the environmental impact of a building, energy consumption, etc; but also with how to facilitate and be a host to the coordinated efforts and measures to be taken towards a more sustainable development. This call for multidisciplinary integration has a strong influence on the organization on my design and the main reason why I refer to it as In/Between ground.

Subject

United Nations
SADD
green building
New York
materialisation
sustainability
Eduardo Calle

To reference this document use:

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b0c1844e-b4e4-4c3a-ad11-5cfca1695b9b

Part of collection

Student theses

Document type

master thesis

Rights

Files

PDF		P5_PRESENTATION_ecalle.pdf		42.65 MB
PDF		Ecalle_posters.pdf		19.12 MB

Close viewer