On August 14th, 2003 FirstEnergy Corp’s failure to trim trees in its Ohio service area resulted in a widespread power outage that left much of the Northeast U.S. without electricity. In New York, the frenzied chaos that ensued compelled its inhabitants to conceive new modes for urban movement. That something so simple could completely disrupt the balance of one of the world’s largest cities underscores the fragility of infrastructural systems. The effects of the blackout demonstrate how a minor glitch can initiate reinterpretations of the urban environment that both reflect and subvert its infrastructural makeup and ordering systems. Accordingly, the effective testing of catastrophic (pattern-changing) events on existing urban conditions holds the potential to develop new relationships, moments of confluence or exaggerated discord, within the urban landscape.  

Through a series of hypothetical interruptions staged at an intersection of lower Manhattan, this thesis examines the extent to which an architectural intervention (be it passive agitation or aggressive interference, fleeting or resilient) may expose, influence, threaten or fortify New York's prescribed order and tendency towards routine.  The ricochet (feedback) of catastrophic events suggests an operational element in this endeavor, one that both plows through the terrain but also bounces up, down and in between its varied spaces. Instead of establishing new but otherwise permanent routes, the idea is to steer a changing course: deviations from the habitual path that facilitate exploration, privilege rule(r)-breakers and, in their impermanence, ask the traveler to dwell less on a destination and more on the moment at hand.