Architecture has become a device for exclusion. Border walls, security checkpoints and detention centers increasingly describe architecture as “barrier”, where safety and surveillance are performed in the service of national integrity and its preservation.
In response to this, we propose an Intake Facility for an Anonymous Client – a client in transit between Heaven and Earth. Located on Governors Island in New York Harbor, the Facility will accommodate a previously unseen user group of future migrants. Its design deploys the foreboding architectural vocabulary of border crossing – but illuminates new outcomes that are unexpected and hard to define.
As West Asian and African refugees shelter in train stations across Europe, which itself braces for Brexit, and while America finds ways to fund its own Great Wall, we propose an architecture of permanent sanctuary: one that prepares us for a future of undaunted, unstoppable migration, and reconfigures the very meaning of “home”.
Celestiametric design considerations
Incoming clients migrating from Heaven will merit specific design requirements. Some of these are shown in these two diagrams.
Above diagram: design guidelines for 3 typical client types, focusing on client wings and their approx. flutter range when stationary and during flight.
Below diagram: design guidelines for arriving clients, focusing on aerial measurements of required landing space. See Image 2 for details regarding landing concourses.
Arrivals Concourse B
Clients arriving from Heaven will land at Governors Island in the Lower New York Harbor at one of two arrivals concourses (A or B). Concourse B, shown here, is located above the existing Island Post Hospital (built 1837). Section (left) and axonometric diagram (right). Rooftop communication hubs relay data to ensure safe client landing. A public observatory (shaded green) allows the visiting public to safely watch client arrival and initial de-celestialization procedures.
Sex Education Capsules
Once inside Phase 1 of the Facility, clients will have the opportunity to procure genitalia and fulfill sexual desire. Prior to their arrival, clients were subject to God and His will, and had no capacity for desire of any kind. The Intake Facility's customized sex education capsules allow clients to experiment with sexual desire for the first time. Two such capsules are shown here. The capsule shown below requires one client to be standing while the other kneels.
Exit Tube & Touchpoint Zero
After being processed in Phase 1 of the Intake Facility, clients arriving from Heaven will pass through the semi-pressurized Exit Tube and touch the ground on Earth for the first time at Touchpoint Zero, at the Northwest end of Fort Jay on Governors Island.
Left: Exit Tube, interior view from above, with Touchpoint Zero beyond.
Right: Exit Tube, exterior view from below, with Fort Jay in the background
Intake Facility Phase 1
Exterior view of the Facility, with skyline of Lower Manhattan in the background. The Exit Tube, with Touchpoint Zero below, can be seen at the far right end of the Facility. Fort Jay (built 1808), its moat, and the moat's embankment are seen on the foreground and on the right.
