Project by Akshara Vinayagam, Mihika Pawar, Abhishek Patel
The Cooling Loop reimagines a mono-functional Midtown Manhattan block as a climate-responsive urban commons, using urban heat island mitigation as a driver for public life. Located between 54th and 55th Streets, the project responds to extreme seasonal discomfort produced by glass canyons, mechanical rooftops, wind stagnation, and the absence of cooling infrastructure.
Rather than introducing new buildings, the proposal adapts existing architecture through a continuous loop of reversible interventions across rooftops, mid-level vacant floors, façades, and ground-level POPS. These layers operate as a shared thermal system—absorbing, circulating, filtering, and redistributing heat and air differently in summer and winter.
By transforming mechanical roofs into water-retentive cooling landscapes, vacant floors into ventilation commons, façades into adaptive climate skins, and POPS into seasonal social rooms, the block becomes a piece of urban climate infrastructure—one that restores comfort, enables dwell time, supports vulnerable populations, and reactivates community life year-round.
