Streets are primary components of urban life. They provide the structure on which to weave all the human interactions with the architectural/urban fabric. Their conception ranges from spontaneous interventions to tremendously contrived public works. The reality is that from the time of antiquity the irregular patterns of the streets have been created through a long process of architectural arbitrations and piecemeal changes. As Italo Calvino writes in Invisible Cities, “cities believe themselves to be the work either of the mind or of chance, but neither the first nor the second suffices to maintain their walls.” Global warming and the contamination of every single ecosystem leave us no choice but to change our way of living and thinking. Sustainable architecture helps to operate facilities with optimum efficiency while having a minimum environmental impact, using strategies to protect water and decrease carbon dioxide emissions through the use of alternative energies.

This competition focuses on the intersection of 9th street and 4th Avenue, highlighting the traditional understanding of streets as ‘carriers of traffic’. It represents the concept that streets are the analytic diagram of urban functions, dominated by transport. In spite of powerful technological innovations, the functions of the street have only been modified; the daily human contact that the street uniquely offers is constantly alienated.

Bio-tech TRAMsportation promotes the use of the street as a locus of personal exchange and communication. The street is treated as a three-dimensional urban structure:

1. It promotes pedestrian ‘communication’ by extending the sidewalks and creating green buffers.
2. It promotes public ‘communication’ by recuperating the historical trolley that connected Red Hook with Prospect Park using a modern green tram.
3. It promotes individual ‘communication’ by creating a physically separate bike lane in both directions.

By extending human interaction into the public domain, we are creating an in-between realm; the belt between private and public. That is why we want to emphasize the pedestrian nature of the street by creating a linear green park that connects focal points for the pedestrian urban neighborhood.