EXPONENTIAL GRID | Eduardo Parra Chavarro

The city GRID has been considered an instrument to rationalize the urban realm. The grid in Manhattan, beyond the walled city, follows this pattern of planning. The attempts to neutralize the space found a further phenomena which was to BREAK OUT OF THE HOMOGENEITY OF THE SPACE. In Manhattan, the blocks started to bring spatial predominance to the intersections and the pacing on the incremental value of the corners, which were tied closely with the accumulation of capitals within the city. The starting point is to consider that the grid is placed as an ABSTRACT STRUCTURE to allow a controlled urban expansion. The grid is considered a MATRIX of a set of paradigms that shaped the urban image along the XX century. Being the grid a planar geometrical order, it has produced a relative spatial disorder in the moment when the singular crops developed into different forms. This development was dependent on the pressure over land prices, creating a hard shaped heterogeneous skyline. We considered the Manhattan urban condition as an ONGOING CONTINUUM PROCESS able to redevelop its own paradigm. In this circumstance, we develop a concept which is divided into two parts; the first one considers the ABSTRACT REALM of the evolution of the geometric paradigm of the grid and its later spatial progression. The future of the city might return to the grid but in a FURTHER PROCESS OF UNFOLDED SPACE. Considering the grid as a first STRATUM, it represents the current scale and dimension which is playing as a spatial matrix structure, the next step might be the projection of the grid into a 3rd dimension: a 3d grid. On the other hand, the MATERIAL REALM reaches the literal spatial process of the existing city as a reality [ MEGASTRUCTURE ] following the geometrical patterns of the grid. This is an abstract EXOSKELETON ASSEMBLED following a non-material matrix which is able to be constructed as a PROGRESSIVE PROCESS OF SPATIAL FILLING according to the natural growth of the city. It is possible to realize a spatial grid rooted in the current condition of the city but developed exponentially, scaled above the city two times, and evolved into a second and third sequenced stratum following a SCAFFOLD structure. Thus, the spatial grid is fractured and unstructured, it brings different qualities and it is the further evolution of the concept. Every evolution of the grid is intersected with the material features of the existing urban artifacts generating a hybrid composition between the existing city and the developed metropolitan scaled mega-structure. Being a structure based on a repetitive nature, it articulates the very different and multiple particularities at the ground level fitting with the current spatial patterns. The project is not considered a monolithic intervention; it is an abstract empty matrix which is progressively occupied according to the urban processes of Manhattan and fusing it with the city through a SYMBIOTIC process. This is how the evolution of the city through a grid is spatially and exponentially unfolded.