Thickening the Public Realm: Choreographing the Interaction of the Public Realm with the Built Environment

<p>The ground plane has always been the primary domain of public activities. However, cities developed under the Modernist influence demonstrate an “object-in-space” circumstance with proliferating sky-scrapers that fragment the city’s ground surface into mid-block spaces and vaguely defined plazas. The demands of motorized-transportation and private enterprise further scatter spaces for pedestrian activities across the plan, section and stratified layers of the city (subterranean or/and elevated networks).The result is an inconsistent public realm that remains from being animated by public vitality. Through the manipulation of the ground-plane, this thesis seeks to remedy such stratification. It posits that a thickening of the ground to create a three-dimensional spatial condition will amplify opportunities for social interaction within otherwise muted civic surfaces. Addressing the contemporary reality of the multiplied ground, this thesis advocates reactivating it as a thickened continuous public domain that dissolves the polarity between the built and social fabric of the city.</p>