UNSECTION: THE SPACE BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE IS OURS

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Street sections were much more of a concern 93 years ago. Transportation technology was changing and so, we thought, should our streets.

Delaminated streets, in response to Harvey Wiley Corbett's Three Deck City.

Un-Sections are to sections what the Nolli map of Rome is to maps. This is a study of Nolli Sections, or detailed documentation of all space left behind in the city for the people. Negative space, slice by slice. What is the threshold between the positive and negative space made of? How much of that line belongs to which urban citizens?

A project precedes mine. In 2003, a studio launched a project to collect nearly 200 street sections, chronicled by scale and location.

The right name will arrive, but for now I just want to document my interest in the spaces of the city which do not and cannot belong to anyone. I truth, architecture is the opposite of space. Space is what exists where architecture isn't. What is left over, is ours. Streets belong to the people who are on their way somewhere. Interiors belong to people who already knew where they were going. In many ways, perhaps, concerning oneself with exteriors is a rather opposite affair than with interiors. Most of the city's interiors are not ours. We will never see the inside of the corner apartment facing the Seine or the West Village townhouse overlooking Washington Square. But we will walk along Rue Bonaparte and Macdougal Street to get there, for these streets are ours. This is to be an investigation into the elements of the street as is understood in a section. Unfolded linear slices of good streets and bad streets will be analyzed, scrutinized, and celebrated for their composition and function.