Crosstown has been a guiding metaphor and convenient label for the creative processes in my life because it implies a special kind of juncture. In a literal sense, it describes a moving from one place to another, a space between polarities and the condition that is neither one nor the other but arguably both. It signifies a change in route, the modulation of a path and its vectors.
Autumn is the place between summer and winter, and while it sometimes has the qualities of both, it is uniquely that space that joins the two. Crossings, bridges, roads, the vehicles that traverse them, are part of a system of change and of bridging a gap between 2 conditions, they are the connections between diverse places. The bus that takes me from the west to the east side is fundamentally no different from the 23rd street on which it runs; it is a conduit, it is the rails of the train, it is that change. That street connects the long and welcoming stoops that characterize Manhattan's west side to the tighter, narrower, shorter and colder thresholds that are so trademark "east side". The street, is an integral part of the network gridiron between the two - it is both at once.
While Crosstown implies moving from
one place to another, it is the epicenter of the collision between disparate places - the intersection.
In art, architecture, music and any human experience, these intersections are critical, the crossing of dissimilar elements,
the melding of the consonant and dissonant, the celebration of a transition, a change, the tolerance of
different points of view.
As an architect I realize the uniqueness of my vantage point. I witness different worlds,
I recognize them as such and strive to understand them.
Only then begins the possibility of exploring how these junctures might benefit
from design intervention, or whether they are best left alone.
