Curving Communities

Type: Rhino, Illustrator, Photoshop, TwinMotion

Partner: Brendan Carroll

Class: ARC307 DAEKWON PARK

Location: Harlem, NYC

Date: 10.08.20

By focusing on Harlem over time in demographics, displacement, protesting, community actions, rapid gentrification, and public housing, we defined how our site should respond to configurations based on community initiatives and providing public housing. The corner of West 128th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard exists at a crucial intersection between the St. Nicholas housing project and the communities within Harlem. Our site proposal has a goal of merging fragmented communities through architectural means of providing a continuous path of community space that accommodates and encourages temporality, and low-income housing that prioritizes optimizing spaces over optimizing the number of units.

Our chosen site located on the corner of West 128th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard exists at a crucial location between the St. Nicholas housing project and the communities within Harlem. These two groups exist in a constant state of tension because the residents of the surrounding neighborhoods do not view the residence of the housing project as a part of their community. The site proposal has a goal of merging this fragmented community back into one while touching upon some of the larger issues within the greater Harlem area, and giving a space for the community to decide what they need most in a space. This will be achieved by:

- Creating a community center that allows for many different configurations based on community needs. 

- Creating new low income housing since no new housing projects have been built in Harlem since the 90s and there is a need for more affordable housing in the community.

-and by Taking over the street and some currently private space within the St. Nicholas housing project to create a large communal space for both the residence of the housing project and the larger Harlem community.