PLATFORM FIVE
LX&R GROUP

Platform Five embodies the 21st century street in that it strives to not only radically upend the transportation status quo, but seeks to use that pretense to create a new urban landscape.

Platform Five endeavors to separate bikes and pedestrians from traffic entirely, with an elevated highway that is exclusively for riders, walkers and runners. When envisioning the 21st century street, it seems premature to assume that the automobile will soon cease to become the mainstay American transportation. At fifteen feet above street level, the highway allows the streets to remain, leaving the automobile be, but lets bikers and people commute without fear of an accident, and without waiting for walk signals.

The highways would supersede bike paths, and cantilever over parking lanes to maximize space. Periodic on and off-ramps, or stairs, would be created where space allowed, so that the transition from highway level to ground level would be smooth and easy. Cyclists and pedestrians could still use the street-level sidewalk—and indeed the street intersection below would still maintain crossing signals, street walks, and improved features as recommended and proven by the Traffic Calming Report. However, use of the highway would be more ideal.

To provide incentive to use the highways, platform five would be erected to serve as a hub, with handicap accessible elevators, bike racks, and an outdoor movie theater nestled into the elevated rail.

The platform itself, numbered five for no other reason that it's the remainder of nine minus four, is not intended to be a standalone structure. Rather, in designing it, LX&R envisioned a network of such platforms throughout Brooklyn and the outer boroughs, tied together by elevated highways. The idea is not simply to reorganize transportation hierarchy, it is an attempt to recapture open spaces that have been lost to asphalt and pavement. All intersections are dead-zones by necessity; they must be empty so that cars may pass through them. In platform five, almost 14,000 square feet of space is reclaimed. That amount of space could be an outdoor theater here, basketball courts there, elevated parkland elsewhere.

Myriad platforms dotting the city can make huge strides toward reforming the urban landscape. Platform vegetation can reduce the urban heat island effect created by asphalt. Robust water capturing systems, if installed, could divert hundreds of gallons of stormwater from being poisoned by dirty tires and trash. The platforms could also change the cultural landscape as well--for though the name 'platform five' is ubiquitous, it gently re-brands what was once '9th and 4th' and gives the intersection its own atmosphere and identity. Platform 5 for movies. Platform 12 for hoops. Platform 20 for morning yoga. Platform 2 for a rally. The large emblem on the roof serves for an easy locator with Internet web browsing.

Platform Five is radical, but it is a small sampling of a radically different urban landscape that favors the cyclist and the pedestrian, retaking the intersection from the automobile and making it theirs.