This project proposes a meditative community offering retreats, introspection, and connection for artists from the hectic New York. It intervened the site elegantly considering the relationship with landscape and existing buildings to unify the artists and the local community. The design began with reinterpretation and deconstruction of Lucy McKenzie’s work through design of an operable wall, a shared boundary at a human scale, and then explored its potential as cruciform systems for new typologies of living and working at an architectural scale.
The intervention highlights itself as a giant cross symbol by introducing two axises connecting existing buildings. The elevated main axis functions as cultural communication while the other ensures peaceful domestic living for artists. All the units are connected to the axis by variations of an operable wall, whose apertures allow people to have a glimpse of different artists working. The experience is like a pilgrimage to embrace the art and purify the soul.