New York, NY—Coplanar with the existing main exhibition floor of the Javits Center, our proposal would double its current area and its capacity for exhibitions and events. Our proposed mezzanine overlooks a recently completed Javits Center extension (the exhibition floor) on the west side and the event space on the east. This extension is subsumed within a region of our proposal that is heavily programmed with civic, cultural, and leisure uses: an “endless” (spiral) museum, a full-size concert hall, a flexible, multifunctional performance hall, and an IMAX theater. A cinemaplex stands nearby on the corner of Tenth Avenue and West Thirtieth Street. Within the immediate vicinity of this civic complex, three hotel towers overlook the project on the east and the Hudson River on the west and are intended to serve conventioneers and visitors to the city. The bases of the hotel towers and the ends of the mall arms share this common surface. The proximity of these structures produces intense potential combinations of use, while the density of programs incentivizes people to visit from distant parts of Manhattan and the greater metropolitan area.

A number of park and landscape settings woven throughout the project provide recreation and leisure opportunities. Most generally, the park space runs along the Hudson riverfront from West Twenty-Eighth Street to West Thirty-Ninth Street at two levels. At grade are amenities for water-based recreation, and elevated above is green space. Both levels act as a continuation of the proposed Hudson River Park, which will ultimately extend the entire length of the island. The upper level turns into the city grid, still elevated, at West Thirtieth Street and at West Thirty-Fourth Street, bounding the entire proposal to the site limit at Eighth Avenue. The drawing in of Hudson River Park effectively pulls the island’s edge into the site, generating continuity with the western shore of Manhattan.

The event space is a vast, open, yet articulated surface for recreational, sport, and leisure activities with varying degrees of structure. The event space lies at the heart of the proposal, bounded on the west by the civic programmatic complex and the Javits Center extension, on the east by the James A. Farley Post Office and Pennsylvania Station on Eighth Avenue, and on the north and south by the wide arms of the park, retail, and commercial structures. Underneath the event space’s artificial surface lie the tracks of the rail yard. The continuous yet highly differentiated blanket of a space frame spans the structure overhead and is partially glazed, partially clad in steel. The event space thus seems both inside and outside and operates as such. Sports requiring open fields, such as softball or soccer, can be played as in an outdoor park, whereas large, stadium-type concerts requiring protection from the elements in winter are also possible. Modulations in the surface create articulated areas more conducive to smaller-scale activities. We envision the use of the event space to resemble that of the meadows in Central Park, but amplified due to the proximity and variety of other programs in the surrounding structures.

Principals: Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto

Design Team: Yama Karim, Jason Payne, Nona Yehia

Interns and assistants: Astrid Piber, Wolfgang Gollwitzer, Matthias Blass, Keisuke Kitagawa, Ade Herkarisma, Joseph Chang

Structural engineer: Ysrael A. Seinuk

Planning and transportation consultants: Paul Buckhurst, Georges Jacquemart