Lenox Lounge is a refuge, a space that people return to repeatedly for its comforting familiarity, privacy, and care. This moment of community lies at the core of Harlem after property. The building that stands in the place of Lenox represents corporate homogenization: a sterile oppressive space that is both nowhere and everywhere at the same time. You fill out standardized forms that feed our optimized algorithms. Human representatives of this multinational bank merely serve as passive intermediaries in an increasingly automated system.
To protect the spaces where Harlem’s community gathers, cultural landmarks must be embedded with financial tools to make a new institution in the place of this corporatized building to safeguard the community from displacement. A counter-archive is established, where qualitative information is valued equally with quantitative data to resist the algorithmic reduction of Harlem’s identity. This counter-archive serves as a collection of resources, stored memories of the past, moments of the present, and creations of the future. It’s a space where people gather, socialize, exchange ideas, and build relationships. Connections and collaborations made here foster political and social action. This balance empowers Harlem’s residents, safeguarding their spaces of leisure while shaping their future by creating a tool to define what value is, instead of it being imposed upon them by a generalization algorithm.
