BUSHWICK - Extended grid
research: interpretation of the extended grid
designteam: Studio Thomas Willemse
type: urbanism / landscape / research
time: 2012-2013

1. grids of Brooklyn
2. the contraction and expansion of Bushwick's grid
3. elements of Bushwick's grid
4. collector of a fragmentary park
5. street water collector
6. water tower house

Two hundred and eighty-five rectangles, eight horizontal lines, fifty vertical lines and one diagonal: these make up Bushwick within the larger geometric composition of rectangles and lines of Brooklyn’s gridirons. The gridiron sets up an urban frame with maximum freedom, like a virgin game board awaiting the first move. However, just like a closer inspection of a game board unexpectedly reveals minute deviations and imperfections the abstract gridiron of Bushwick suddenly reveals itself as a system of exception and anomalies rather than one of uniformity and equality. What first seemed like the epitome of rational urban structure suddenly turns into a linear trace of the irrationalities and irregularities of the landscape: the course of an earlier road, a slightly meandering creek, borders appear with the more tilted rectangles of a neighbouring grid, whole areas with extreme topography disappear out of the grid, …

The game board reveals itself not as a neutral space, but one guiding every move according to its inner, irregular logic that goes disguised behind the geometric abstraction of the grid. These abundant irregularities steer the unfolding game. Some avenues become thickly packed with shops while others are sparsely populated with commerce, one street can be lined with a continuous row of identical town houses, whereas another street suddenly has wide openings between its almost suburban houses. A new figure emerges, not a clean lattice of fine lines perpendicular to one another, but one with thick lines extending and contracting, cluttered with bulges and engulfing whole blocks. This blurry, extended grid is not merely facilitating, but, in fact, determining the course of the game. It is also in these ambiguous, interstitial fringes, this unsuspected margin, that perhaps the true wealth of Bushwick’s grid is to be found.

Counter-intuitively the blocks of Bushwick do not interact as simple solid components, but instead each side of a block has to be compatible with its opposite neighbour: it becomes a game of mirrors tied to the lines of the grid. The shops on one side of the avenue reflect those on the other side, a continuous row of urban town houses faces an almost identical façade, a broken line of houses complements the openings in the other side. The blocks become the domino blocks of the game board, following their own strict rules as they intertwine with the irregularities of the grid. The location within this grid becomes key. The edges of the game board allow for multiple, diverse compositions, whereas the juxtaposition of similar blocks in the centre of the grid binds the blocks of the inner core into a more homogeneous heart. As changes of expansion and contraction sweep through the blocks the distinction between borders and core becomes ever more pronounced.