LINCOLN CENTER ELEMENTAL

The Lincoln Center on Broadway is one of New Yorkʼs meccas of culture. Designed as a campus perched above the city, it has always stood apart from the totalizing force of the grid. Its redesign in 2012 invited the surrounding streetscape into its fold, breaking the plinth into a generous set of urban stairs and public space.

This project leverages a rare slice in the New York City grid, where an unusual amount of sun pours into the streets and the disruption of Broadway creates strange shapes and confluences. A tilted plane descends from the edge of the plinth to Broadway, unifying a space that had been awkwardly disjointed, and in the process creating a large and flexible plaza. A field condition, parametrically generated from solar exposure data, forms the basis of the paving pattern. Rainwater percolates through permeable soils, benches extrude out of the pattern, and a patchwork of trees and understory emerge from the soft spots in the cityʼs surface. A responsive shade and wind filtering structure provides year-long comfort.