THE LINELIGHT_ Roosevelt Island Art Center

Roosvelt Island is a privileged place in New York, but seldom visited due to its bad communication to the rest of the city. Its population, with a high percentage of low-income housing, with old people and a considerable disabled community, for a long time has been debating the future of South Point and its abandoned hospital.

It is a tricky matter, since we are talking about a very desirable and still virgin lot of New York city. The local population wants to keep it as a public space for leisure, which is not very fulfilling to political and developers´ ambitions.  

Our Linelight project pretends to preserve Memorial Park as the residents wish, and to activate it with the proposed program which will be located underneath its surface, thus giving a new public space to the island with a very ambitious new cultural facility for the local residents to enjoy, as for a wider New York City and tourist population, which in turn will bring life and economic activity to the now sleeping island.  

We organize the multi-program of the competition brief (Center for Visual Arts) along the Linelight, which starts right as you land in the new subway stop (necessary to connect the island to the exterior, since now they only have that cable car). We puncture the lines going from Manhattan to Queens, passing right there.  

The whole idea for this project is a continuous ascending circulation, starting at the subway stop and ending at the tip of the island, conceived as a second public space underneath the park. In this lower layer we will find auditoriums, concert and conference venues, and exhibition spaces, opening into different piazzas created at this lower level.

The underground condition of these programs is ideal for these types of cultural activities, where darkness or very controlled light and sound conditions are desired. Skylights are commonplace for these programs everywhere.

The park, in direct relation with its underground program, will enjoy of this flux of people who will use the park connected to it, in addition to local residents and tourists.

The Southpoint in Roosevelt Island remains one of the most untouched and privileged places of New York. The aim of this project is to build a cultural center on that place while preserving the park.

The project pretends to activate the park thanks to the multi-functional program of the Visual and Performing Arts Center, which will be located underneath the surface. The two layers work together as one and are connected through the cut made on the earth that runs from the new subway station until the end of the island.

This cut of light works as a second level of public space with wider areas (like piazzas) in direct relation to the program and the park.

The program, consisting of art galleries, studios, screening and performing spaces, finds here its ideal location for light and sound control.

The fact of developing the program in one long and single continuous floor, responds not only to the shape of the island, but most important, to the physical limitations of part of the community of it.

The abandoned Smallpox Hospital located on the funnel section of the island becomes the gate to the site, on both its upper level and its underground level and the icon of this invisible project, highlighting the history of the site by having this structure as the only architectural element on its surface. Just as with the park, we have decided to leave the hospital as a ruin, and part of the park experience, not touching on the patina of time that exists in its current state.  We believe that any intervention to it would kill its current beauty and its direct connection to this other time. We leave the wild vegetation to roam free in the lateral wings and activate the space with a sculpture garden, treating this stone architecture as a sculptural element in itself.

Only the central wing would be covered by a glass ceiling, turning the covered architecture into the reception and a event´s hall with views on both sides, to Manhattan and Queens. It also connects at that point with the underground level – the old and the new meeting in this vertical space lighted during the day by sunlight coming through the glass roof. At night the old hospital turns into a lighthouse and beacon for the city. Without building on the surface, we manage to create a “spectacular” effect with light and the old architecture which is already there,  while preserving the park and its history.

Some walls of the Linelight covered by reflective glass, twist in a certain ratio to reflect the skyline of Manhattan to the interior of the cut.

The underground program in some parts is open to the park, letting transversal circulation and entries of light appear.

When we arrive at the end of the island, the walkway starts emerging to the surface to admire the most wonderful view of all. The climax of the Linelight is the memorial opening to the sea.   

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QUESTIONS to the young team for the publication in 2006:

1.         +Guadalupe:   5th year of career and working in an architecture studio (b720)

            +Hostench:      Final Project and working in an architecture studio (Fernando Alvarez)

2.         +G:      ETSAB, Barcelona 1999-2006

                         ESA, Paris 2003-2004

                         architecture experience:            b720, Barcelona 2006

                                                               TEN-arquitectos, NY 2005

                                                               SII, Paris 2004

                                                               COLOCO, Paris 2003

                     Personal Installations:   CUC, The Cocoon House (Minimousse competition award, IFA, Paris) 2003

                                                                 _Exibited in:    - BABA design festival, (FAD, Barcelona)

                                                                                        -Un peu d´Alice Festival, (Aix-en-Provence)

                                                                                        -Le jardin des Tuilleries, (Paris)

                                                           "Piso 23" Lift in the Translucent house of Alfons Soldevila", ETSAB, (Barcelona 2001)

                                                                 _published in Quaderns d´arquitectura IN TRANSIT

            +H:       ETSAB, Barcelona 2000-2006

                        TU Delft, The Netherlands 2003-2004

                        Architecture experience:           Fernando Alvarez Studio, Barcelona 2003, 2005

                                                           OMA, Rotterdam 2003

                         Winning Competitions:  Martyr's square contest, Beirut. 2nd price. 2005

                                                           Racons de Ciutat Vella, Barcelona. Published. 2003

3.         We met in Manuel de Solà-Morales Urbanism class. We started there working as a team, and this is our first competition together.

4.         We agreed that this competition had some really nice values as a site thinking about a local community, a multi-program related to the Arts and the freedom of an idea's competition.

5.         We spent many afternoons discussing in bars and the studio for 3 months.

7.         Our first vision for the site was to keep the Southpoint as it is now, but having the program there at the same time.