About

CONTRAST

The needle and the globe represent the two extremes of Manhattan’s formal vocabulary and describe the outer limits of its architectural choices. The needle is the thinnest, least voluminous structure to mark a location within the Grid. It combines maximum physical impact with a negligible consumption of ground. It is, essentially, a building without an interior. The globe is mathematically, the form that encloses the maximum interior volume with the least external skin. It has a promiscuous capacity to absorb objects, people, iconographies, symbolism; it relates them through the mere fact of their coexistence in its interior.

— Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York

Just as easily, it could have been called The Practice of Everyday Life, after Michel de Certeau’s book of illuminating social connections, whose premise also guides the contributing content of this site.