Platform explores what gradual decommissioning of the highway could do for restitching the landscape of Washington Heights and its subsequent community. Finally reuniting them with the coast they’ve been separated from since the construction of the highway. Previous to the highway, the landscape was accessible to the community through a series of paths, bridges, and tunnels. These pre-existing human-scaled interventions were minimized and built over. Instead of a full teardown of these highways, the platform explores what it means to turn these devices that have for so long fragmented the landscape into devices that can now connect these various disconnected green spaces, posing a new mode of thinking of green space in urban contexts. Platform uncovers these infrastructures and utilizes the decommissioned portion of the highway as a device to link these preexisting human-scaled paths and spaces into a larger connected network. Within that system, the “pool house” functions as a central gathering point for the community and provides a space for recreation and commodore.
