RED, GREEN & BLUE
Newark today is three different cities. One part New York City’s commercial expansion grounds, one part industrial waterfront, and one part (blighted) residential sprawl. All three cities exist within the same geographical bounds and at the same time, yet they rarely interact or acknowledge each other’s existence. If Newark is to have a bright future, these three estranged cities must come together.
While this union must be initiated by political will and community engagement, the architecture of the city can play a large role in facilitating integration. By bringing the most successful elements from each of the three disparate cities together we propose to create Newark’s unique future building type. This concept is illustrated in color theory’s use of RGB – Red, Green and Blue – when combined, these three basic colors work together to create an infinite variety of colors. RGB Newark will bring together primary existing architectural elements from each part of the city to create a new infinitely diverse and exciting building typology.
Industrial Newark offers the basic building block – the ubiquitous shipping container. The container, with its own structural and stacking logic, combined with basic unit typologies from Residential Newark, and towering massing of Commercial Newark, will create the new landmark – Unite RGB. The building, situated on the site of the old Westinghouse block will become a gateway into the Commercial Newark for a daily commuter, complete with shopping arcade and garden access. To local residents from the blighted Residential Newark, RGB is not only a place to live, but also a place to play (community park located on the building’s plinth and playgrounds on its roof) and a place to work (the small and medium scale commercial spaces are subsidized for local small business). Shipping containers from Industrial Newark make up not only the residential units, but garages, storage, gardens, mechanical systems, rain water retention systems, solar energy harvesting equipment and green roofs – after all the shipping container was design to safely hold virtual anything!!! And a traveler along US280, aboard NJ Transit or Amtrak will observe a unique building – one that is clearly derived from Newark’s rich history but also inspires the city’s bright future – not as three disparate limited and homogenous components, but as one diverse, multifaceted, happy city.
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