Ilija Bentscheff

Ilija Bentscheff, 2010
Advisers: Prof. E. Sobejano, Prof. A. Krischnaitz, Prof. C. Gengnagel, UdK Berlin


FORWORD


The United Nations is an international organization, founded after the Second World War as a replacement of the League of Nations providing a platform of dialogue to virtually all nations or sovereign states, targeting reviews and strategies for international security, international law, economic development and human rights.
The United Nations established seventeen specialized agencies to give permanent institutions to their work for humanity, peace, health, wealth, peace and justice.

"The United Nations Headquarters Building in New York City is an architectural icon, recognized in every nation on every continent. It rose from the ashes of two catastrophic wars. It stands as a symbol of hope that a union of na¬tions can come together in one place and work together for peace. Sixty years ago, the founders of the United Nations had to assemble a team of world renowned architects to design a headquarters that would express a vision about a future without war. The architects were not just employees, but representatives of the member states.
Walter Harrison, the planning director of the United Nations stated: "And I feel that we have not built a symbol of peace, but a workshop for peace."
Eleven Architects, from eleven different nations were asked to come together to design a complex of buildings where the work of peace will take place. Brilliant men, each regarded as his country's finest, would have to find a way to work with each other to find a common ground and create something together, better than one could alone. It was the same challenge that would face the United Nations itself. "
Quoted from the documentary "A Workshop for Peace" by Peter Rosen.

This institution has proven the importance of an international dialogue and its headquarters manifest a built sign of a world coming together and working together on peace. It stands for the recognition of humanity beyond na¬tional interests, but for humanitarian interests.
One can see the United Nations Headquarters as a sign. The head of the planning commission Wallace Har¬rison said: "We are not simply building a symbol for peace, but a workshop for peace." But this invokes a notion of representation; of a symbol. The status it being a symbol made the U.N. become subject of security and terrorism today (the attack on symbols is the strongest act of de-moralization). The changed context of the institution has affected the operations on its architecture. For example, the once open lawn of the campus of the Headquarters is surrounded by fences, surveillance cameras and police similar to an airport. Furthermore, the number of member states and therefore the number of representatives increased from 51 original members to 192 today.
This situation articulates itself not only in a spacial deficit, but questions the sign; the role of its architecture and therefore of its representation and meaning. Since the institution is in a continuous evolution, it is transcendental and therefore cannot be interpreted as a monument; as a manifestation of an event (the foundation of the United Nation). It rather has to be read in the terms of progress and development. That is the sign; a clear architecture standing for a greater collective being in peace; a place of debate and negotiation. Its architecture stands for something greater than its own history.
Another question is the notion of communication and representation of the body of work and the function and achievements of the United Nation. Representatives of the General Assembly submitted a proposal for enhancing the United Nations experience for visitors (fifty-fifth session, Agenda Item 117). The proposal contains a programmatic nar¬rative and precisely calculated visitor, planning and revenue projections. The project is currently on hold, but is a basis for my proposal.

These conditions lead to the idea of my thesis project; a spacial and programmatic extension; a visitors' center to the United Nations Headquarters. The extension of the headquarters may offer an opportunity to establish a dialogue with new audiences and form a new relationship to its urban and global context.

THE VISITORS CENTER

The proposed visitors' center is the link between the body of work of the United Nations, the city of New York and the original United Nations Headquarters buildings. Starting from the extension of the narrow park on 47th Street, the ground level of the building provides an open floor plan for the educational facilities including an auditorium, seminar rooms, a library and a cafeteria. The upper level is an exhibition level, divided in four zones. After completing the upper level, the visitors have the chance to walk through the underground passage towards the original United Nations Headquarters. The passage is a 4000sqm exhibition hall which contains an interactive multimedia exhibition about the history of the United Nations.

THE SITE

Manhattan's underlying structures and diagrams can be read in various ways. The dominant grid of Manhattan may be understood in the Kantian sense as a transcendental basis, superimposed as a symbol of pure rationality abandoning any negotiation with the topography of the physical place and its natural conditions. This collision of the grid and the waterline of the East River articulate fractional city blocks. My proposal utilizes the structure of this condition to inform the basic volumetric structure to suggest a notion of the city and the possibility of constant change and expansion. The basic volumes are oriented along the dominant direction of the city blocks to form a notion of a continuation of the city as the symbol of the public onto the site: onto the North Lawn of the United Nations territory. The United Nations Headquarters buildings are placed in north-south orientation; 90 degrees rotated to the Manhattan blocks and seem to stand against the structuring grid of the city as an autonomous composition. Those two directions on the site inform the second underlying formal diagram of my proposal; a negotiation of the two directions.

THE FORMAL CONCEPT

The United Nations Headquarters buildings articulate a for my proposal very important relationship between the ground/datum and the buildings. The ground is the datum of the composition and is normative plane for the original composition to be read as distributed volumes of various types (vertical slab, flat box and object). This distribution or dispersal also carries the notion of a fictional reading; a reading of transparency in terms of the function and organization of the buildings. The separated volumes clearly display their function in a typological sense by being neither transparent nor publically accessible. The notion of the ground is informing the third formal-conceptual diagram or layer of my proposal; detaching the building form the datum.

CONCEPTUAL LAYERING

The basic volumes in the direction of the city block are now dissolved into faces. This topological level is basis of the structuring elements of the building; its walls. The walls in the dominant direction of the city blocks are being lifted up to leave the ground in a continuous relationship to the original buildings. To maintain the performative quality of the walls as the diagram of organization and as the structural element, the walls are being cut out on the lower levels. This formal procedure does leave the wall as the structural element without introducing another element like columns or even a structural subsystem. The cuts are in the shape of curves, which are optimized in terms of their structural performance. This method allows the walls to cantilever and the volumes to be read as detached from the ground. Internally, the form of the ground-detached walls register in each level of the building, from a dominating formation in the upper exhibition level to rudimentary pieces in the lower level.

THE BUILDING

The design for the new building creates a threshold for representation, art and education. It acts as the connection between the city and the United Nations Headquarters; a truly public building. The building-form is a series of monumental walls as a response to the underlying grid-vectors of the city and the U.N. Headquarters. The building invites the visitor into a journey through the history and recent work of the U.N. evoking a truly physical experience of the achievements and currents works of the U.N..