Six Gates

Beyond providing an icon, a gateway, and a wayfinding device for Chinatown, Six Gates was proposed as sanctuary in and otherwise hectic and congested city intersection. Formally, the gates twist ninety degrees as they arch over from one side to the other. The resulting perpendicular abutments drastically improves the structural balance and eliminates the need for deep foundations. Crucially, this strategy also subdivides the space into a series of niches that provides partial privacy and a chance to escape the masses. Six Gates has been designed to accommodate the needs of both locals and tourists. The broad form factor of the gate’s abutments can easily accommodate the integration of a LinkNYC kiosk. These large touch screens provide a wealth of information which can be easily updated as the needs of users changes and new services become available. Our teammates at Arup were tasked with engineering this system and it has been successfully deployed extensively throughout New York City. In addition to this digital wayfinding tool, Six Gates also includes a large relief model of Chinatown’s buildings and roads that can provide orientation to visitors as they navigate around the neighborhood for the first time.

Six Gates was entered as a proposal for an open competition held in 2017.