Scaling the Threshold: When Community Architecture Becomes Too Large
Discover the balance of scale and intimacy in urban architecture. When Hudson Yards opened in Manhattan in 2019, it promised a new urban neighborhood built from scratch, with 16 towers and 4,000 residential units.
Despite its lavish amenities and lofty public plazas, a peculiar emptiness persisted, speaking to a fundamental truth about human social capacity.
Where architectural ambition outpaces human cognitive limits, the potential for intimacy collapses.
The traditional Japanese concept of roji, the in-between spaces that act as transitional zones for users to form communal bonds, worked brilliantly at small scales.
- 16 towers with 4,000 residential units were erected in hopes of creating a strong community.
- Modernist visionaries once dreamed of "streets in the sky" that would foster vertical villages, but reality proved stubborn.
Author's summary: Balance of scale and intimacy in urban architecture matters.
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