Architecture for the general public is known to be about the upbringing of buildings and residences and the way people circulate or move through a certain space. Yet as a person who goes more in depth with technicality and as you study the focus of architecture more in depth you realize that it’s also about the language an urban project or a specific building has with its surroundings. You come to realize the significance that you want the project to evoke on a person and you also want people to understand the statement that you’re trying to express as an architect or as a group of architects.

 

Hudson Yards is most definitely one of the newest tourist attractions in New York City. Therefore, it is a very picturesque place but with luxury as a forefront. It’s an urban project that interacts with the High Line creating a larger responsibility in circulation and the proper flow people. As most of us know the High Line is a museum of architecture, a pathway that cuts through neighborhoods and buildings allowing a person to have various experiences. Nonetheless, the High Line achieves all of this with historic significance and smoothness for various blocks; not highly altering the design that a neighborhood already had. Meanwhile Hudson Yards is a project that creates its own world such as the Lincoln Center and Rockefeller Center but I would say in a less successful manner. Every building in Hudson Yards just speaks its own design which is not bad as an individual figure but it’s unsuccessful as a unison besides the entities of glass. Circulation fails to lead you to a main attraction or the tallest buildings as it is done in Rockefeller Center.

 

Therefore, how does Hudson Yards compare to the urban planning of Battery Park city? I would say that Hudson yards is clearly driven by money and luxury. Meanwhile Battery Park city is driven by the true definition but what architecture stands for which is the interaction of society, the interaction within a neighborhood, the blend and coherence of a new neighborhood with the existing one and the concept of utilizing money for the progression of society rather than the waste and exalt of money.