The project focuses on rethinking New York City’s social housing projects, and the specific site is East River Houses in East Harlem. Gentrification is colonialism to both the district and its residents. The social housing project intended to create a single functioned area for dwelling, which represented the initial intention of living together, building up a new order, a heterotopia place. The current image of buildings does not lead to the association of living and accommodation: it’s more or less a frivolous overlap of modern-style boxes. To add a more explicit sense of uniting and living, the indication should deliver stronger new symbols.
In this proposal, the symbolic house modules revoke the sense of living together. Various types of modules function as diversified programs to be shared by a group of NYCHA residents. Several floors of the building will be reconstructed into platforms on which groups of houses will be inserted that can activate a provocative mode of life. In the newly generated space, daily activities are provided with the implication and association of montaging.
