Manhattan, like many other parts of the world, has experienced a drastically changing landscape over the last few centuries. When the Dutch arrived in the 1600s they began to transform a landscape that was unaltered by the activity of the Lenape Native Americans, to something that began to resemble other early settlements in the Americas. Natives were displaced and the city of Manhattan was eventually born. During the transition from the Industrial Age to the Gilded Age Manhattan began to look like the Manhattan that is recognizable to people around the world today. It’s a highly-urbanized part of the world which must accommodate a rapidly increasing population and adapt to demographic and environmental changes.
In Manhattan, it is evident that within an urban context the state of architecture has shifted from that of something permanent and certain to that of something more fluid and adaptable to changing conditions in terms of the people occupying the spaces.
Manhattan is a landscape that is constantly changing in terms of architecture and population. While there is a significant amount of exterior architecture from the nineteenth century that still makes up the blocks of the city, skyscrapers are going up constantly and architects are designing them in a way that allows them to accommodate the shifting conditions. Rem Koolhaas goes into depth about this subject in Delirious New York. “In terms of urbanism, this indeterminacy means that a particular site can no longer be matched with any single predetermined purpose.” (Koolhaas, 85) In modern times mixed use development has become a part of many urbanized regions. Mixed use development typically includes commercial space, residential space, office space, etc. This mixed use is subject to change over time.
Something remarkable about skyscrapers is how in a sense they begin to serve as microcosms of the city within the city. The mixed programs within a single building can cover the range of basic human needs. “For a while our 1,200,000 square feet of rentable area seemed almost like a new continent, so vast and vacant were its many floors…More than the sum of its floors, the Equitable is promoted as a “City in itself, housing 16,000 souls.” This example may only be referring to the housing capabilities of these massive structures, but it is becoming more and more common to see buildings with some commercial program on the ground level, typically food oriented, maybe a gym, and then potentially office or apartment space in the floors above. In this highly technologically advanced society that we live in today startup companies move in and out of these types of spaces at a rapid rate.
“… the diversity of the 84 platforms of the 1909 Skyscraper holds out the promise that all this business is only a phase, a provisional occupation that anticipates the Skyscraper’s conquest by other forms of culture, floor by floor if necessary.” (Koolhaas, 87). The alternation of programs within a monolithic structure such as a skyscraper creates a paradoxical condition. From the exterior, the viewer sees the same material, form, and structure from the ground up. But if they actually go inside and move through the space they’ll see a variety of people supporting a variety of programs.
Koolhaas talks about skyscrapers as things that camouflage into the urban scheme of manhattan, one being hardly distinguishable from the other to the untrained or inattentive eye. This supports the idea the architecture is a contradictory thing. This contradiction between form and function continues to characterize many densely-populated cities today.
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