Ultra.V Diner: Reimagining a Neighborhood Staple in NYC
Team
Name: Alya James Abourezk
Nationality: Lebanese-Syrian-American
Institution / Company: Columbia GSAPP
Name: Gene Han
Nationality: Korean-American
Institution / Company: Columbia GSAPP
Name: Gustavo Lopez Mendoza
Nationality: Venezuelan-Mexican-American
Institution / Company: Columbia GSAPP
-FINALIST of HEALING Competition
In New York City, home to the three members of our team, the pandemic desolated one of the liveliest metropoles in the world. The fear of contamination emptied the sidewalks, shut down indoor dining, and halted the city that never sleeps.
The Square Diner, a Tribeca favorite, encapsulated what it meant to be a familiar neighborhood staple. The comfy booth seating, retro finishes and no frills service recalls the urban americana that exists only in NYC. On the verge of permanent closure, the Square Diner presents itself as the perfect small business to preserve.
“Ultra.V,” the re-imagined diner, breaks down the original diner’s systems of circulation and service providing channels for each to extend into a modular-like scaffold structure above. On the street level, the diner’s original one-way circulation is subdivided into personalized access routes leading to compartmentalized dining pods. Within the scaffold, a UV-light lift directly delivers food to each dining pod with minimum contact. As the main feature of our project, ultra-violet lights capture the retro diner ambience while continuously sanitizing its surroundings.
Healing the debilitating Square Diner confronts the challenges of COVID-19 — combining a vision of the future with its retrospective origins.
#SmallBusiness #FoodIndustry #PublicSpaceSanitation #AlternativeTechnologies #NewLifestyles
