2050 Megastructure NYC is a large scale, semester-long theoretical project for an extremely high density development on the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan. Growing populations and economies increasingly stress natural resources and ecosystems. We are challenged to help to minimize and reverse this stress by making this growth sustainable by understanding and deploying smart growth strategies
that increase development density within established urban environments. Sites formerly considered too burdensome, such as railyards and brownfields, have now become among the most desirable development sites in the planet’s most vibrant megacity. This project is not a skyscraper, but a megastructure that houses a bulk of programs: ferry terminal, city park extension, commercial center, theaters, offices, hotels, and a series of elevated sky parks as public recreation spaces that are open to the public. The building is reaching a height of 2750 feet tall at its tip, with over 10 million gross square footage. It's also designed so that it's ready for a wide range of sustainable eco-machine systems, including geothermal power exchange, tide power generation, PV panels, wind power generation, ice batteries, etc., which can help reduce the active energy use significantly in this building. We're envisioning this project in the trajectory of 30-40 years in the future, for which we're on the optimistic side of spectrum, while still be cautious about the environmental challenges that exists within a urban circumference. This project is at its best, challenging the capability of us as designers, to control different aspects of a project in terms of complexity, structure integrity, concept theory developing, and urban design strategies.

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Team: Ritchie Ju, Zhuoying Lin, Kai Zhang