Perspective sketch showing all main elements of the project : looking through entry corridor (fauces) towards sunken courtyard (impluvium & compluvium) populated with the spoliated columns of the destroyed units of the colonnade (paterfamilias)
"Facing all who entered through the fauces, the paterfamilias controlled the boundaries of the house. Some scholars have compared his position and control of the domus to that of the Etruscan and Roman soothsayers, or haruspices, who stood on the platform of the temple to define the physical boundaries (templum) of its sacred power"
- Clark, The Houses of Roman Italy, 6
MANHATTAN INSULAE
Manhattan Island with a completed Commissioner's Grid and the site (Astor Place and Lafayette Place) marked.
Though several millennia and the Atlantic Ocean separate our narratives, Rome is where this one begins. The double meaning of insula - referring to both the particular perimeter-block housing typology that housed ancient Rome's working class, and the word island - allow the ancient city to be read as a new archipelago for the displaced Greeks. Now, two millennia later, we have Manhattan: an island, gridded as though a fragment of the Roman Empire drifted across the Atlantic, and built as the seat of a new empire for a displaced republic. This ideal potential of the commissioner’s grid is dimmed, however, by the fact that it is incomplete – lower Manhattan predated it, and the topography of the northern tip dissolves it. Thus, the parti of the proposal is simply to extend the ideal grid across the existing city, completing the past vision and, by engaging it, restoring its civic relevance.
Site plan showing the proposal in black and the existing fabric in grey, overlaid by the extended Commissioner's Grid
The point of origin for this project is LaGrange Terrace, on Lafayette Place. Butting up against the Commissioner’s Grid, Lafayette Place was the last street to have countered the Grid's orthogonal structure, though only by a few degrees. Located on Lafayette Place are the remains of the Colonnades at LaGrange Terrace, a displacement of Rome’s Piazza di Pietra, lifted on a podium, screening recessed townhouses. When first built, it extended along the entire block forming a Nash- like urban fabric, however now only four units remain, standing alone on what was once the most fashionable street in New York. But the Colonnade has always been a fragment; even in its various “complete” states it implied a continuation of its ideal fabric past the limits of its body. By clearing out the surrounding city – whose own forces countered those of the colonnade – this fragment of an alternative ideal has been transformed into an object: a static guardian.
By incorporating this abandoned fabric into the syntax of the insulae, it becomes an active participant in a new urban still life. Rather than abandoning the city’s outdated ideals, it engages them in our modern dialogues to inform the invention of new orders.
Model photograph, basswood, 2' x 4'
The form and program embodying this gesture to “complete” the Commissioners Grid align with its original roman roots as well, becoming a series of elevated perimeter-block insulae. This type of housing, which was akin to our contemporary dormitories, evolved from the syntax of the domus, in which the critical elements were the fauces (entry corridor), leading to an atrium with a conpluvium (skylight) directly above an impluvium (pool to collect water), and beyond, the lares (niche housing an- cestral figures). These four elements can be seen as a distillation of human experience across all space and time, embodying the sky above in the conpluvium, the ground below in the impluvium, the past in the lares, and the future with oneself entering the fauces.
These four basic elements provide the syntax for the floating, wall-like insulae. A collection of piers holding circulation and program (bathrooms, showers, kitchens, etc.) support the insulae and serve as entry corridors (fauci) for the central court, which is depressed a few feet (impluvium) and open above (conpluvium). The “ancestors” (lares) populating each court are the spoliated columns from the demolished units of the Colonnade.
Model photograph showing programatic shim elements and elevated insulae
Model photograph, elevation
Ground plan and elevation
Second floor plan (piano nobile) and section
TOP: Etching of the Piazza di Pietra in Rome, 1761
ABOVE: Etching of LaGrange Terrace, 1835
TOP: Plan fragments of two ancient Roman domi
ABOVE: Plan fragments of two ancient Roman insulae. Note the similar syntax of central court wrapped by single-loaded corridors giving onto private chambers.
TOP LEFT: plan fragment from Templum entry study of Seagram's Building
BOTTOM LEFT: plan fragment from Templum entry study of CBS Building
TOP RIGHT: superimposed plan and elevation from Templum entry study of the Temple of Seti I in Egypt
BOTTOM RIGHT: plan from Templum entry study of the Temple of Seti I in Egypt
Ideal entry condition: plan, elevation, section.