Karman Liang
An Urban Gradient
My design reimagines a Brutalist-era privately owned public space (POPS) located at Park Towers Medical Plaza in Gramercy Park, a site that has been shaped by commercial priorities, harsh materiality, and the need for accessibility. Inspired by Sharon Zukin’s critique of privatized public space, I sought to reclaim the site’s civic role. I drew on a pasta model study and used stacking and offsetting as a core design language to shape steps, conversation pits, and implied surfaces.
My final design transforms the POPS into a continuous sequence of sculpted concrete steps that wrap around the building, with ramps seamlessly integrated throughout. The design responds to the building’s architecture with heavy materiality, softened by ambient lighting and greenery. In the Front Plaza, near the building entrance, amphitheater-style seating radiates from planters with trees, inviting everyday encounters. The Sunken Plaza fosters introspection through its separation from the street, as the steps dissolve into scattered cubes that offer informal seating while maintaining wheelchair accessibility. At the site’s highest elevation, the Rear Plaza’s grassy field and sunken conversation pits become a site for gathering and public programming.
Each space builds on the last, creating a fluid spatial narrative. Located in a residential neighborhood of families and young adults, the space welcomes a range of users: children exploring its forms, teens and adults pausing for solitude or connection. This design allows Park Towers Medical Plaza to evolve beyond a mere walkway, becoming a place that people return to, reinvent, and remember together.
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