Course Syllabus

Architecture in Mid Air: Capping the Cross Bronx Expressway

8/29/22 Draft Syllabus: 01_Bell_4105_Fall_2022.pdf

9/3/22  Draft All School Studio Lottery: Bell_Final.pdf

9/7/22 Near Infrastructural Architecture: 03_Near_Infrastructural_Architecture.pdf

9/7/22 Draft Studio Schedule: 02_Bell_4105_Fall_2022_Schedule.pdf

*** Please note that the Munich Pavilion is a focus of studio but other works driven by a material and structural thesis may be proposed by each designer. 

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Capping the Cross Bronx Expressway arises in part from research led by Peter Muennig, Professor of Public Health. See: Cost-Effectiveness of Capping Freeways for Use as Parks: The New York Cross-Bronx Expressway, Case Study. By: Sooyoung Kim, MPH, Zafar Zafari, PhD, MSc, Martine Bellanger, PhD, and Peter Alexander Muennig, MD, MPH. Capping Cross Bronx.pdf

This studio builds on work done in the Fall of 2021. A joint design studio and seminar focused on architecture, public health and urbanism was taught by Michael Bell and Peter Muennig, Professor of Public Health. That syllabus can be found here: Bell_4105_with_Muennig_Fall_2021_RS.pdf

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Frei Otto’s cable structure created for the 1972 Munich Olympics made use of a tension cable structure. At first glance one would not likely notice that a series of struts are used in compression to dilate the members suspending the tensile net into an array. They approach each other but are kept apart — the struts intervene in what would otherwise be a collapse—they work to open space and moderate the flow of force.....SEE SYLLABUS ABOVE

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People, Place, Historical Context: This studio will explore, design and offer techniques to span the Cross Bronx Expressway (CBE) as a prelude to the NYC interstate roadway being possibly enclosed or “capped”. The 6.5-mile-long freeway was constructed over a five-year period between 1959 and 1964. The opportunity to imagine it being at least partially enclosed has in the past two years become more realistic as the Biden-Harris Administration Infrastructure Bill includes funding for an initial feasibility study and as much as one billion dollars to both enclose the freeway and subsequently provide new public park space above it.

An early feasibility study was awarded in 2022 to a global professional design and engineering firm in NYC in a process that did not actually include a public RFP or RFQ. One of our goals is to explore what an RRP or RFQ might look for like such a critical public work. As patterns of mobility and commerce and vehicles shifts in the next decade our studio will also ask what is the wider future of major roadways such as the CBE?

Building upon a prior studio run in Fall 2021 by Michael Bell with Professor of Public Health Peter Muennig this studio will similarly imagine the Public Heath ramifications of enclosing the freeway and the invention of new public space or public assets atop it. But unlike the current call for a public park we will instead imagine where both structure and spanning means could open the door for new forms of public architecture. What kinds of space are possible and what would they be used for or enable? The structural goals are material based and intended to offer imaginative work that a normal RFP or RFQ would not premiate or likely isolate for study.

We will work with an array of guests who lend their vision and expertise and in particular with WSP Engineering who have included Michael Bell and Peter Muennig in a planned team for future phases of the feasibility stud

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