Located in downtown Manhattan, Park51 was designed by Michel Abboud for SOMA Architects. The Islamic Community Center and prayer space is located in Lower Manhattan, a couple of blocks away from Ground Zero. Due to the strong controversy provoked by the project, the true challenge was to create a piece of architecture that would propose a platform for mediation of social, cultural, urban and political differences in one coherent environment that would equally cater for all parties. The 22-storey building façade of interconnected webbing takes root in the historical fundamentals of Islamic pattern making. Using a parametric scripting tool written specifically for this exercise using advanced modeling software, we were able to manipulate the density of the geometries in real-time by adapting the skin to the interior program, privacy, and daylight control.
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