1 – THE STREET FAIR NEEDS TO LOOSEN UP.
Street fairs exist in every city of the world, and yet the spatial experience remains largely homogenous. There is no there there, no friction to slow one down, no space of collectivity. Only by loosening up and creating a variety of spatial experiences will the tired street fair transcend itself to become a street festival.
2 – FOR THE STREETFEST TO ENGAGE THE CITY, IT MUST BE MADE OF THE CITY.
Two “materials” of the city become the primary building blocks of our streetfest proposal – scaffolding and the stoop. Scaffolding surrounds us and yet we take it for granted. It is the ultimate recyclable material, constantly being reinvented as it is redeployed throughout the city. The stoop is the urban space of informal collectivity. It is the space of discussion, the space to see and be seen, the space of casual reflection on the city. The City In The City borrows from these two uniquely urban models, but recasts them in entirely new ways – creating an experience that is simultaneously the same as the surrounding city and completely different.
3 – SPACE IS AT A PREMIUM IN THE CITY. THE STREETFEST MUST MAKE THE MOST OF IT.
Although made of efficient units that can pack together to create a single 1600sf space, the City In The City can be deployed in a variety of configurations that unhinge space between the covered units, expanding the reach and influence of the streetfest. Just as in the best urban environments of the world, it is the spaces between the built form that are the most important, the public spaces of collectivity.
4 – THE CITY IN THE CITY CREATES AN INTENSIFIED VERSION OF ITSELF.
It is a spatially diverse space – dispersed and cohesive, compressed and open, contingent and legible – that in turn catalyzes a multiplicity of experiences – introspective and participatory, actor and spectator, flaneur and voyeur. In addition, a patterned accumulation of towers and ridges broadcast this internal spatial variety on the neighborhood “skyline” of the Bowery, giving the City In The City a strong (yet intriguingly slippery) formal identity, and elevating it from mere tent shelter to an urban instrument capable of stirring a collective consciousness.
