Tabula Fluxus

New York is becoming ever more crowded, with the number of tourists increasing every year and nearly a million more people due to move here by 2030. With Manhattan’s ground plane nearly built to its fullest capacity, the city is challenged to find new ways to accommodate all these additional people. Tabula Fluxus turns skyward for future sites of inhabitation. 

Tabula Fluxus proposes a second grid over Manhattan, a single connected structure 700 feet above street level. The new grid relieves street level congestion by adding a second layer of possibilities for moving around Manhattan, linking the tops of skyscrapers and introducing new forms of transportation. More importantly, it creates new sites for future development in which New Yorkers can live, work and play. New architectural typologies are introduced that extend downward to occupy the existing voids in Manhattan’s skyline. This new grid will necessarily respond to the city’s 21st century challenges, serving as a framework for energy harvesting, agriculture, and other environmental uses. Tabula Fluxus redefines Manhattan as a truly three-dimensional grid.

The Unfinished Grid Competition | New York, NY             | Winning entry

Team: Yi Choe, Michael Chaveriat

Thomas Davies, A view of the attack..., 1776

captures the late-18th-century landscape of northern Manhattan, with its rolling hills, forests, and rocks, with only a few homes and farms by the Harlem River. 

Egbert L. Viele, View of 2nd Ave., 1861

showing topographical changes that resulted from the Commissioners’ radical vision of city infrastructure.