Location: Chelsea, NYC

Design Intentions: What started out as an exploration of layers in a city became a design of an assisted living facility in New York City.  West Side Senior Living is adjacent to the HighLine, a newly constructed elevated, pedestrian park.  West Side Senior Living is composed of individual groupings of towers that hold varying types of units.  Above the senior living units is a band of artist housing that shares the public functions at the base of the towers.  Both the senior living community and the artists have communal and shared program on the base levels and have access to the courtyard and ultimately to the HighLine.  The mixing of these different types of people create a positive friction; a mixing of skillsets.  The HighLine is extended to the West and turns into the courtyard between the towers.  What is created is a place to sit and an opportunity for social interaction.

The site is currently a parking lot which runs under where the HighLine jumps across from 10th avenue to meandering through buildings.   To the northwest of West Side Senior Living is Frank Gehry’s IAC office building and to the south is a twelve story  storage complex.  To the direct west are views out to the Hudson River and visual connections to Chelsea Piers Recreation Complex.

Time for Completion: 15 weeks