Thesis : The Nuanced Topia — Tommy CheeMou Yang

Parsons School of Design • Instructor: David Leven & Peter Robinson • Fall 2019- Spring 2020

Book-ended by two monstrous mega-developments (Hudson Yards and Little Hong Kong) the community at the 74-Roosevelt Ave Station is an intersection constructed from the crossing of the elevated train infrastructure and Broadway Ave. Here it is a node of two communities, Jackson Heights and Elmhurst; a site nuanced with characters moving in and out of the station, selling produce, and spending the afternoon wandering the restaurants with their fazing signs under the elevated. The approach to the elevated 7-Train structure is blanketed by the neon lights, dazzling from the signs of the commercial stores.

From the sidewalks, to the train platform and storefronts of Roosevelt and Broadway Ave these spaces are being reinvented and re-framed into spaces of eating, sleeping, sitting, and waiting as artisans set up their venues on the edges. They are on sidewalks; chefs begin grilling and steaming biryani, and an evangelist begins preaching to all the passersby. Origami to paintings, turmeric to tamales, incense to preaching all make the ordinary ground a ground where everyone is connected by the transient senses, spirits, gods, and ancestors. Sounds, smells, and atmosphere trigger wide ranging memories and feelings. The differing narratives waft throughout the minds of the community as they are lured into looking at vendors. A “collective unconscious,” an embedded series of actions within an individual is triggered by these constructed environments, technologies, and medias, dividing specific roles for the habitants.[1]

Ana Luz defines these scenes as the “in-between spaces,” a new solid location where daily acts are enacted and performed. The same spaces switches use and users throughout the day, creating and recreating numerous scenarios.[2] All creating the set to a monumental play driven by movement, natural elements, and transportation infrastructures.

Here architecture is an assembly of programs plugged into the pervasive system of the whole. The structures hinges on spaces of opportunities that engulf the existing train structure creating spaces for the day to day actors. It is a fable between existing sites and its artifacts of process, deriving from the clash of the urban grids and intersection of transportation arteries. In this framework lives objects, humans, trains, buses, and the nuanced acts of life are congregated. Interrelated zones allow characters to create, tell, and showcase fantasies that hinge themselves on the existing infrastructure of the International Rail Line. “Place(s) to realize many of our true desires, even if only for a season, a brief Pirate Utopia, a warped free-zone in the old Space/Time Continuum… worlds that include… tribal gathering, the forest conclave of eco-saboteurs, the idyllic Beltane of the neo pagans, anarchist conferences, and gay faery circles…. And old-time libertarian picnics.” [3] By incorporating these spaces into the act of reclamation, my thesis examines the site as a convergence of urban ecosystems, industrial artifacts and human events. These actions of the characters maintain the -topias fantasies for anarchic uprivals, environmental efficiency, ethical treatments and the production of self and goods.

[1] Amin, Ash. "Land of Strangers." Identities: Settling Differences in a Land of Strangers 20, no. 1 (2013): 1-8.

[2] Naripea, Eva et all. Ana Luz, Place and Location (Ed. 5), Places In-Between: The Transit(tional) Locations of Nomadic Narratives (2006): pp. 143-165

[3] Hakim Bey. T.A.Z : The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Mt. View, Calif. : Boulder, Colo.: Wiretap ; NetLibrary, 1990.

The Journey Starts Here • Intersecting Realities • The Not So Ordinary

Frameworks of fables and narratives of the day to day-built environment are utilized to examine speculative interventions for the city. They are visualized through a lens of mapping showcasing systems and props that allow lives to play out. From the zooming lines that connect station to station, to the underground pipes that allow for sewerage to be released into the surrounding water bodies of the New York boroughs, these infrastructures lead to social and ecological patches that stir their own stories. They reveal zones of immigrants and people of color, meal gaps, heat islands, Combined Sewer Outfalls, water pollution, and energy usages. It is a thorough analysis of fiction worth reading in our built environment. Data fills the gaps that showcase how people and natural elements navigate through the infrastructure of services and systems.

This series is consisted of 65 illustrations done in the Fall 2019. Here is a snippet of the journey.

Microcosm of the City : The International Rail Line

This thesis design project places itself on the 7-train (known as today's International Rail Line, and one of the National Millennium Express Way) one of the infrastructures that choreograph people, elements, and services daily. Started by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in the mid-1910s, it expanded multiple times in both directions with a big expansion in the 1920's. It is then advertised as a propagandist vision of the future of the 1939 World's fair. Today the 7 train, now known as the crossroads of the world, connects the 5 boroughs top micro-communities from Hudson Yards, Time Square, Little India, and Little Hong Kong. [1]

[1] Tonnelat, Stéphane, William Kornblum, and Administrateur Hal Nanterre. International Express: New Yorkers on the 7 Train. Columbia University Press, 2017.

74-Roosevelt Ave. Station : Site Zoning and the Intersection of Arteries

YangTommy_NTopia_ExistingTransportation&SiteZoning

Welcome to the Nuanced -Topia! A Micro-Community of Making and Storytelling in Post-Industrial Queens

Site Plan • The Maker’s Plan • Ground Plan

Slices of Life

Our Hands that Paint, Our Hands that Sculp

The stories of this place

At the end of the labyrinth the Factory for Puppetry and Story Crafts with the Church of the People buzz with life. Characters clash and mitigate with each other to create artifacts for performances and façade detailing. Stories of the everyday are harvested through engagements, storytelling circles and gathering and are transcribed into the envelope of the architectural structures by the community. Crowds begin to gather in the green courtyards to hear leaders roar in uprivals against mega developments coming to Jackson Heights and Elmhurst. Our stories matter. Our lives matter. We must take our world back. The total environment is a multitude of people and natural elements moving through systems and services. Space and Place in the Nuanced -Topia, acts as a means of ethical accountability using architecture as an instrument to interrogate social infrastructures and civic identity, a palace for people’s stories.