Williamsburgh Now

Today, Williamsburgh is comprised of four distinctive areas.

South side – Hasidic Jewish Community
East side –Hispanic community, mainly from Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic
North Side (North Side of the Bridge) – The thriving area of artists and commercial area, which includes our project site.

During 1980’s and 1990’s, Artists started moving into the North side of Williamsburgh. It is because of rent inflation in SOHO and East Village due to neighborhood gentrification. Also, artists were attracted by the proximity of Williamsburgh to the city, and affordability of large loft spaces. This rise of artistic community seemed to create movement that rejuvenated abandoned factory buildings and convert into apartment/workspace. It seems that this conversion of abandoned factories into livable dwelling units started because of practicality of affordable large space for artists. This movement seemed to become more commercial now, to live in a LOFT.
A typical example of this is Domino Sugar Factory, which will be renovated into mixed income housing complex. The renovation and expansion of old Domino Sugar Factory will be designed by Rafael Vinoly. Another aspect of North Side of Williamsburgh is that the artistic community attracted commercial business, such as restaurants and shops.

Williamsburgh 50 years from now,

The movie that I chose that related to the theme of “Williamsburgh 50 year from now”, is Ghost in the Shell, Japanese Animation. The story of Ghost in the Shell is that in the future, people experience two types of world. One is Physical world that we live now and the other world is cybernetics virtual world, which is accessed from not only a computerized human brain, but also A.I. So human can connect to this cybernetic information world without interface (we uses keyboard, Now). Ghost in the shell was made as comic first in the early 1990’s. It seem to have predicted the situation we are currently in, which is co-existence of Physical and virtual world, cell phone and internet. I think this notion of co-existence of physical world and virtual world, such as telecommute, will be more influential in 50 years from now. The cybernetic information technology will be integrated into some of the advanced technology and theory we have now. Let’s say the system of self-organization and robotic could re-organize the building system to meet temporary programs that is requested by dwellers or pedestrian. In this case, cybernetic information network becomes central control system to manipulate those advanced technologies.