Rooted in the ground, this public space intervention aims at breaking the existing urban typology to reveal the hidden natural resources lying underneath the surface to reconnect the community to its host. A 6,700-square-foot underground public space located at 103 MacDougal Street unites the ground conditions and connects the past and present axes of MacDougal Street and Minetta Street. The existing site’s underground history is critical to the project. Minetta Street contradicts the grid system of the surrounding streets, hinting at the subterranean creek in which it mimics. Minetta Creek can be seen as the thoroughfare of its time, connecting the Land of the Blacks to New Amsterdam. Since the Land of the Blacks, the ground has been used as a resource for economic capital, with hierarchies of power and community layering up upon one another. This project aims at subverting this notion, using the ground as a resource of knowledge, wisdom, and reflection. By going into the ground and engaging with the past, it now becomes present.
