Exhaust and territorialisation at the Washington Bridge Apartments, New York City, 1963-1973

摘要

The Washington Bridge Apartments represent one of the first forms of planning in New York City that simultaneously introduced pollution into the city while also providing a space protected from it. As extreme as the Washington Bridge Apartments may appear today, the constellation of ideas they represent continues into the present. In the mid 1980s, developers proposed more tempered versions of air-rights planning in the neighbourhood directly abutting the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown. In what the Koch administration dubbed 'The Special Manhattan Bridge Planning District', developers proposed creating an enclave from the fumes of the Manhattan Bridge for three luxury apartment buildings. The strategies of the Washington Bridge Apartments also continue into the present through the greening of environmentally questionable sites such as Lower West Manhattan. The advertisements of the 'Sol-aire' apartment complex in Battery Park City promise future residents 'double-filtered air' in a context known for its profusion of unhealthy dust from the World Trade Center collapse and the massive redevelopment of the area produced by buildings such as the Sol-Aire. By linking pollution, architecture, planning, and demographic engineering, the forces behind the Washington Bridge Apartments produced new material and discursive urbanisation strategies that re-developed Washington Heights and that continue to motivate new forms of urban re-development. Rather than representing the end of an era of naff planning, the Washington Bridge Apartments embody a new form of architecture and planning that negotiates the abject matter of the city as a force of urban change.