This first studio in the MS.AURD program – PROJECT NYC – Waterfront Urbanism, taught by Professor Tom Verebes, aims to explore urban design as an information-based, projective design discipline, immersing the new cohort into New York City as a living urban laboratory. A set of preliminary Survey and Tooling exercises were presented at a midterm review. Students were introduced to New York City through a virtual and remote research stage, comprising two Survey Exercises. In a first exercise, the visual and spatial grammar of the city was captured, analyzed and documented through online open-source data resources. A second Survey Exercise focused on documenting 90 coastal conditions across the five boroughs, through drawings of coastal conditions and sets of locally specific information. In two Tooling Exercises, students were introduced to design skills, including methods of creating variable models through rule-based dimensional variations and their proliferations in an exercise on Massing Morphology. Working with the City Intelligence Lab, students worked with DeCoding Spaces software to analyze circulation, views and exposure. The main proposal will address a series of waterfront sites to scheme Post-Pandemic Environments (PPE).

Prof. Tom Verebes

Students: Abdullah Almohaisen, Akshita Rathore, Siddhi Rathi, Wei Chen, Manpreet Hanspal, Rithik Reddy Sama, Shefali Chari, Shreya Shahane, Thiyva Velusamy.