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Sumit Singhal
Sumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination. 42nd Street by Studio Maurice ShaperoAugust 16th, 2013 by Sumit Singhal
Article source: Studio Maurice Shapero At the rite of passage into the adult world teenagers are possessed, particularly viscerally, by the relative world. The body is a vehicle for sensory physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experience. From this perspective imagine the profound, mysterious transformation happening at that time.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero
 Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero The environment is seen through the vale of visceral fascination which flips from the sublime to the morbid – ecstasy to paralyzing pain – excitement to boredom. As extremes of emotion are experienced, so the transition point in the middle is filled with confusion and uncertainty. Feeling. awkward nothing fits in with demands wants to change the world can’t bare fixedness the body is changing at a rate never before seen new sensory organs come online.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero Could a building reflect and help reconcile this transformation we all go through? A place they could feel ‘at home’ in – when the ‘home’ which they have loved throughout their life suddenly becomes alien – when the one place of security and protection becomes a restriction and the people you love who live there appear all too well defined. A building which offers security and familiarity, domestic in scale, but with unusual freedom stable and yet free.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero A building which expresses duality – two opposing forces geometries. The geometry of the site context containing a rebellious form which cuts through the site in a gesture of defiance. The site context provides a solid, familiarity. a comforting brick environment with the almost domestic proportions of the Victorian shop and the Coates School building.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero The new building follows the existing urban geometry and forms a similarly proportioned three story end elevation to Jersey Street. Although the Pickford Street elevation is ‘longer’ in scale and more akin to its neighbouring MM2 development, it is still ‘polite’ and sensibly adheres to its contextual geometry.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero Inherent within the placing of the main accommodation at the back of the site, is the lack of a presence on Great Ancoats Street. The solution is to slice a link though the gap between the end of the Coates School and the gable of the MM2 apartment block, terminating at Great Ancoats Street as the point of entrance.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero The form of this link manifests itself as a ‘leaning’ wall wedged between the existing brick containment which continues on to slice though the orthogonal main building. In cutting the main building a triangular, double height, vertical space is formed, the stair cascades up the side of the wall completing the journey of circulation, always in relation to this ‘rogue’ angular gesture. From a conceptual perspective this rogue element will fuel a synergistic relationship with the centre and its not so old, not so square, visitors.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero The main accommodation building is orthogonal, rational and simple in its expression, this is to provide an overall stability and will enhance the juxtaposed angular sliced leaning wall. The windows are all orthogonal too, but are spaced in a random way. Again, this is to balance all the right angles, too many aligned grids can feel oppressive.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero The people who ‘are’ 42nd Street have become particulary adept at dealing with the desire to self harm, to cut in order to express or release powerful overwhelming forces. Inherent within this desire is the notion of balancing, curing with like for like, violence cancelled by violence.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero Leonard Cohen wrote the lyrics: ‘There is a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in’. To release this building from its completeness as a ‘box’ a 17M long glass slot slices through its core – that’s how the light gets in. Such vulnerability as this must be protected at all costs, it’s what keeps us straying too far from ourselves. Four steel Sentinels stand guard, they demand inspire your attension and clarity of heart, before you pass into this modern manifestation of sacred space. Once inside be prepared for the unexpected: tapering stairs, angled rooms, leaning walls, a corridor to nowhere – and wardrobes which are passages to the psychologically protected land of one to one therapy.  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero  Image Courtesy © Studio Maurice Shapero
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