Beneath a mega-block in midtown Manhattan lie the remains of a once-grand Pennsylvania Station, decapitated and pushed below ground in 1963. Above, its replacement on the urban stage: Madison Square Garden. Two important civic monuments disconnected from the city and one another by a vast thickness of poché in both plan and section.
My project takes that poché as its operational territory. Where it is manifested as a solid, between station and stadium, I carve; where it is void, between the complex and the city, I build. A versatile system of mass-timber construction formally unites the two processes by maintaining a similar language across both types of space: transitioning smoothly from a solid coffered ceiling when carving beneath the stadium to a lighter frame structure when filling in the empty poché of the city block.
The resulting spaces resolve the existing circulatory messiness of both station and stadium and allow for a more inspiring, public experience of each, fitting with their importance to New York City.
