In the 5-story blocks of Tribeca where I live and work, much of the sunlight that reaches the ground is first reflected by bigger buildings at the periphery of these blocks. One of these big buildings is the 24-story Western Union Building, designed by the architect Ralph Walker in 1929, now called 60 Hudson.
The facades of 60 Hudson have a gradient coloration, with 19 colors of brick, as well as intricate fenestration and massing.
These photos reveal the environment that the building produces, the way that it animates its surroundings in all directions. They also how the presence of light joins building and ground together, allowing them to be seen together in ever-changing relationships, with a focus on affiliations between them.
The task of these photos is to enable things that exist together—building and ground, city and nature--to be seen together, even though there is no language with which to describe their relationships. The presence of water and light, which are part of city nature, reveals the topography, layering and heterogeneity of grounds and buildings together, in their similarities as well as their differences.
An installation of five scrolls of photos in the window of 60 Hudson, April 2023, allowed passersby to consider the ways in which the building produces its environment.