UCL Discovery

Abstract

This paper discusses research in progress that is considering the historic transformations of the public-private interface of New York's row houses. The study considers morphological and configurational properties of the architectural, urban and social parameters that have shaped the residential streetscape. The aim is to understand how city-wide urbanisation processes affect shifts in building form, layout and use over time. West Village is considered as an exemplar of Manhattan’s urbanisation process. The study shows that two opposing forces had an impact on its neighbourhood profile: on the one hand, the historic preservation restrictions and regulations for the area’s row houses, that generally preserved their generic built form characteristics; on the other hand, the extensions of main street arteries, that increased the area’s connectivity to the rest of the city. Using the architectural measures of space syntax alongside analysis of urban form, the study presents the way these forces have transformed the street façade so as to construct compatible building-street interfaces alongside the evolving urbanisation. The paper discusses whether space - and implicitly, the way it is structured in terms of the street network, the lot organisation and the built form - creates the flexibility for the built environment to respond to the continuously shifting socio-spatial circumstances over time. The paper concludes that West Village has adapted to New York's urbanisation by allowing for spatial - and therefore social and economic - diversity in the built fabric at all scales: façade, lot, block and, grid.