Salt City Arcade

Intersection of Walton and South Salina Streets | Syracuse, NY

Fall 2016 | Prof. Randall Korman | Arc 307

Responding to the loss of the public domain in Downtown Syracuse, situating the arcade in Armory Square, helps reclaim the current undefined space created through suburban sprawl. This project aims to further the reinvention of the district with the addition of retail, dining, office and living spaces. As opposed to a modern “shopping mall”, the arcade serves as a social condenser, enriching the level of human activity by eliminating the typical street and warping the typical urban grid. Through this design, the facade was the major focus after the building’s form was decided, acting as different depths of thresholds through which users would pass. Designing for the grade incline of seven feet, stairs and circulation were centrally located at the vertex. By creating such a drastic separation between the two blocks of the site, it allows for the design to blend into the context, of reasonably sized brick buildings, as opposed to one large mass at the end of the terminus of the street. With all program oriented to the arcade facade, leftover spaces were adapted to create spaces that could be used for indoor seating as well as courtyards for the tenants.

Both the interior and exterior facades serve to investigate the transfiguration between wall and frame, becoming more of a wall in this project. With threshold in mind, the user’s experience of changing spaces was important to the design. Particularly in the interior, the use of transparent and translucent glass would seem to not create a threshold alone. But by layering thick glass, a threshold can begin to form. The single form of the bridges acts as the signifier of the vertex as well as the secondary circulation corridor, being the only connection between the two blocks of the design. The thin form of the skylight is meant to not interrupt the facade’s beauty, only to act as a means of coverage to the arcade floor. 

Ground Floor Plan