Imprinted Pathways
Columbia GSAPP / Advanced V Studio / Fall 2025
Instructor: Flores and Prats
Design Proposal
This project reimagines the underside of the expressway as a shared ground for living, making, and public engagement. The space directly beneath the expressway supports existing industries, while former industrial areas become exhibition spaces for the work of artists in residence above. A series of lightwells organizes the building, connects programs across floors, and brings daylight into workshops and galleries. Their presence shapes daily life in the housing units and supports flexible creative production.
The expressway and the Montauk Cutoff act as facilitators. Their geometries guide roofs, thresholds, and spatial alignments, while the imprint of the cutoff becomes a lightwell or elevated path that introduces openness and movement. Material choices tie the project to its context. Ground metal offcuts are combined into steel fiber reinforced concrete, allowing thinner structural elements and expressing the district’s industrial history.
plan diagram
Existing Condition Analysis
The site is heavily industrial in character. Along the expressway, billboards of eclectic heights and widths line the infrastructure. The Montauk Cutoff, once an active rail line, is now abandoned and has become a corridor of encroaching wilderness. Within this industrial landscape, the operator’s house beside the retractable bridge stands as the sole sign of domesticity, offering shade and momentary refuge for passersby.
Utilization of the underbelly of the expressway
Through interviews, it became evident that workers on the site rely on low wages. In response, and in consideration of the broader development pressures in Long Island City and the constraints of the IBZ policy, the project proposes an artist residency that operates in equilibrium with the existing industries. To accommodate new programs, the project occupies the underbelly of the expressway, a zone well suited to industrial uses that require minimal daylight. This strategic relocation frees up ground-level space, allowing new programs to emerge within the site.
Existing Industries of the site next to the expressway
Adjacent to the expressway, the site is occupied by a range of industries, including a print shop, a marble factory, and a steel fabricator. The project introduces exhibition spaces at the ground level to activate public engagement, transforming the edge of the expressway into an indoor gallery while extending exhibitions outdoors along the Montauk Cutoff.
Different Scales of Public Spaces
As the expressway descends toward the city, its structure changes in height and section. Responding to this variation, the project introduces a series of differently elevated platforms that form workshops with distinct spatial conditions. Together, these platforms create a layered landscape beneath the expressway, accommodating diverse forms of making while engaging the infrastructural geometry above.
Lightwells connecting housing and exhibitions
The ground floor plan shows how the lightwell cores become thick masses that shape circulation and create different spatial experiences throughout the building. The existing loading dock facade is reused as the main entrance, while the existing billboard post supports an external stair that leads to the housing above.
Parts of the exhibition space extend under the expressway and the cutoff, sometimes enclosed and sometimes open to the air. By interacting directly with the cutoff, the billboard post, and the structure of the expressway, the plan produces spatial conditions unique to this site.
A flexible structure providing flexible living
On the third floor, the division between work and living becomes more fluid. The lightwells that acted primarily as walls on the second floor now develop into thicker spatial zones where residents can place shelves or furniture.
These areas support both work and domestic use, allowing programs to overlap. Privacy is maintained through the use of curtains, which let residents adjust their level of enclosure while keeping the plan open and adaptable.
Inside the lightwells
The second floor establishes a direct connection from the cutoff to the housing while also linking to the structural bays of the expressway. Through these interfaces, the housing becomes connected to both the workshops beneath the expressway and the elevated paths of the cutoff.
Within the housing, the lightwells contain differently shaped vertical connections that lead to the upper levels. They distribute light deep into the building and create bright communal spaces. The side facing the road is organized as the residential zone, while the opposite side becomes circulation and communal workshop space. The areas around the lightwells form quieter workspaces where residents can focus.
Facade corresponding to interior logic
The elevation extends the geometry of the pitched roof, but the facade develops its own language. A triangular aluminum surface aligns with the interior walls and structure, concealing them within a unified expression. In response, the structural columns rise to different heights, meeting the shifting triangular profile. The varying peaks allow more natural light to enter the upper residential levels, while the lower portions create a more controlled, enclosed atmosphere for the ground-floor gallery.
Connection between housing and workshop
The transverse section highlights the connection between the housing and the underbelly of the expressway. An outdoor gallery sits beneath the expressway and creates a programmatic link between the industrial workshops and the exhibition spaces, allowing work produced on site to flow directly into public display.
The triangular shaped facade establishes a shared language between the two buildings but operates differently in each context. In the housing, the structure is hidden behind the triangular facade and rises through the floors to support the living spaces. Under the expressway, the same triangular geometry is transformed into a truss system that spans across the workshops and the outdoor gallery, creating more open and generous spaces.
Expresssway structure leading to new spatial logic
The section shows how the underbelly of the expressway supports the existing industrial workshops through a series of varied floor heights and functional cores. Each core serves a different role such as restrooms, circulation stairs, or a freight elevator, providing structural stability and enabling movement across the building.
The expressways structure creates a sequence of stepped platforms that connect to the cutoff, the adjacent housing, and the street. These transitional spaces become moments where workers can rest, move between programs, or pause within the flow of the site.
The structural logic of the expressway, seen in its X shaped and inverted V shaped braces, extends into the new construction. These shapes are projected outward to form a pitched roof that spans across the underbelly and creates a continuous space that shelters and unifies the areas below.
Series of landscapes
Overall, the pitched roof extending from the existing expressway structure, the facade system that reflects interior logic, and the retained warehouse wall that frames the new building together create a layered collage of landscapes.
1:200 model/ Bristol paper, Charcoal, Basswood/ 2025
Imprinted Pathways
This project reimagines the underside of the expressway as a shared ground for living, making, and public engagement. The space directly beneath the expressway supports existing industries, while former industrial areas become exhibition spaces for the work of artists in residence above. A series of lightwells organizes the building, connects programs across floors, and brings daylight into workshops and galleries. Their presence shapes daily life in the housing units and supports flexible creative production.
The expressway and the Montauk Cutoff act as facilitators. Their geometries guide roofs, thresholds, and spatial alignments, while the imprint of the cutoff becomes a lightwell or elevated path that introduces openness and movement. Material choices tie the project to its context. Ground metal offcuts are combined into steel fiber reinforced concrete, allowing thinner structural elements and expressing the district’s industrial history.