Harlem 260 Mart - By Carson Smuts

- Columbia University  - GSAPP - 2010

- Accepting what people in Harlem want and what works, the projects looks at utilizing the app and wireless network to incorporate the assets of 125th street while recognizing the existing typology.

To accomplish this the intentions for the App is to overlay onto the architecture and the architecture to overlay onto the urban fabric of 125th. In doing so it both simultaneously pulls the site out onto the street and the street into the site becoming a part of the fabric of 125th.

• The assets incorporated into the building come from 125th street, Harlems musical culture and the areas history.
• The vendor activity along 125th street and the historical link between them and the site itself is taken into consideration. With nonspecific place for them to currently trade, the building provides a new street that they can utilize which is theirs.

Harlems rich jazz culture is a part of both the areas history and current condition. The city currently has a proposal for the National Jazz Museum to be the main operator of the site. Live Jazz is also a large part of the areas contemporary condition.

The project looks at both historical archiving of Jazz and the Live aspect of Jazz, and looks into the possibilities the wireless app provides to connect the Archive with the Live.

- Urban studies of the vendor activity along 125th sparked my interest in the topic. The networking between the different constituents of 125th and the potential that lay there interested me aswell.

- In order for the project to become part of the urban fabric this concept of pulling the street in arouse.

- The project would not only have to absorb the sidewalk but feed it back out again, hence the loop.

- This concept led to the idea of a loop in the form of a ramp, in order to maintain the continuity of a street that slabs would otherwise disrupt.

Several iterations of this formal expression were explored in terms of forming a loop. They tend to start performing architectural gymnastics in order to achieve this conept.

-  To achieve the loop, a single linear ramp was employed. The loop is a bending of the street experience done through the app. Network devices are able to give proximity data, GPS data and compass information. These allow the building to know where the user is , where they have being and the direction they are heading.

This is the ramp folded out in a linear path. The lines beneath show how the users experience is altered based on weather they are heading up or down the ramp enabling different experiences for the user and creating the loop from top to bottom.

- The structure of the building incorporates a atrium which maintains the visual and physical continuity of a street while walking through the building,

The form of the atrium was morphed to account for sun angles and to create variation of spaces on the ramp.

Finally the atrium employs irregularity found along a streets facade in the supporting structure. This structure supports the ramp from the center of the building while the boundary walls support the ramps from the outer edge of the site.

-Along the ramp music studios are placed, in which users can record or just have a jam session. They take on the essence of small shop fronts along a street, and create moments of musical interaction for museum browsers passing by. Sound is controlled, so to enable artist a quite space if they wish, but the studio projects sound onto the ramp passing by, through speakers to enable people to listen in. The studios take on a robust outer shell and are lined in a warmer materiality that is more inviting and softer to the touch for users to enter.

Music played in these becomes part of the exhibit in a live manner, whilst the recorded footage becomes part of the exhibit in a archived manner.

APPs and APi's

Users visiting the 124.5 are presented with a interface with which they can communicate with the building.

Users can choose to allow access to their social network music data which enables the building to know, what their preferences are, who they listen to most etc..

View and edit your own exhibit content or browse the museum archive.

…augmented view allows users to point their camera and extract information from the exhibit, aswell as listen to audio.

...you can then take your time and watch the footage as you please.

-Api's are what add to the users custom profile. This enables the building to create a far more customized exhibit based on what users know and what they don't yet know. This data is updated regularly and is freely accessible providing the users grants access through the app.

- The loop is formed through the users visual and audible experience which is different going up and going down. The wall reveals different information and elements in a different spatial sequence aswell, things are not revealed in the same place twice.

- Proximity rules are applied for single and multiple users swell as crowds.

When another user passes by a stationary one, their is a negotiation that takes places, their exhibit takes preference, interrupting the exhibit of the person standing still for a moment. This person gets a glimpse into someone elses interests via the visuals aswell as audio though headphones and your network device, which is also interrupted.

When there is a crowd, an iso- potential graph is formed from all their locations and this creates an average of all their information and shares it across a screen. At this point audio would have to be selective.

- Views are maintained throughout the building. One always has a sense of what is happening in the studios. The side walls are cluttered with peoples exhibits as they walk by.

Their is a projection of sound and visuals from each studio out onto the ramp.

-The turn around is on the top of the building on a completely open area. The exhibit still follows the user.

- The buildings facade on 125th is a projection of not only the Live studio sessions but recorded archive aswell. The facade is pulled forward to overlay onto the street, it acts as a base for the interactive app via the network device aswell as a facade.

The ramp starts on the edge of 125th but the building is set back and serves to pull the sidewalk into the site.

The intention is for the building to pull 125th in yet overlay at the same time.

- This interactive museum provides passers by and its users with both the live aspect of jazz and the archived, it recognizes the history of 125th and provides a place for vendors to utilize. The museum itself is not just regurgitate archived data but rather in the spirit of performance and art, provides a place for live lectures and performances to occur and projects these in itself.