The Meadowlands site is a place that has a developed meaning. Time has allowed millions of people to experience the events hosted within each of it's structures. Through association with the functions of these buildings and the interactions of people, the surrounding landscape has become something more than a paved tundra. On game day, it becomes an intense fervor of social activity, where shared interests bring people together even though the forum for their interaction is a desolate parking lot. However, for the majority of the time, this space is ignored as people pass through it on the way to shows or the racetrack unaware of the social significance it once held.
Most recently the site came back into focus for new purposes as a revenue generator, a job creator, and and an economic stimulus. The problem has become a struggling economy in the midst of a recession and the proposed solution is a building of commerce. Yet, plans have faced issues of contingency. The program relies on a site where occupancy depends on a schedule of events. For the most part, the public has been opposed to the new building as its design appears to reject the meaning that the site has taken. The design process undertaken thus far has been objectively oriented towards solving the issues at hand through internal methods that determine content. However, this process doesn't allow for a flexibility in design that is necessary to accomplish a project in coordination with the history of a place, appropriate for the present state of a place, and adaptable to the future of a place. There exists a certain contingency that ties together the content and context of a project. Thus building on the Meadowlands requires a shift in focus from what are the problems to what are the capabilities of the place, that starts with recalibrating what is already there.
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