[Eighty] One Manhattan Square

Manhattan used to be a place populated by residential hotels, from the Bowery’s inimitable Palace to the myriad of single-occupancy hotels once found throughout the city. However, starting at the beginning of the 20th century “opinion makers saw residential hotels as caldrons of social and cultural evil”1 directly responsible for urban blight and crime, leading to policies forbidding such establishments in the city. In recent years we’ve seen the emergence of new subjects, from digital nomads to retired widows, who would instead prefer spaces that foster communality and sense of home, more akin to the residential hotels of yore.

Rethinking One Manhattan Square, a new luxury tower in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, within this context, existing walls, structure, and circulation cores are removed. The plan is restructured by a cardo and decumanus of living, reappropriating the historical Roman urban layout for collective inhabitation. Oriented along the north-south axis are the primary, shared functions associated with bathing and waste removal (pools, showers, and toilets). The east-west axis of the decumanus are services essential for cooking, cleaning, and vertical circulation. By condensing these necessary functions into two axes focused on communal programs, the remaining floor space is liberated from rigid or predefined parcelization. Within this area, moveable partition systems and storage cabinets occurring on a regular grid are inserted. Private space becomes a constantly negotiated, everchanging territory based on the needs of the community.