02 THESISDOC 234—34/2
View Looking Towards BroadwayView Looking Down Howard St.View of Hollowed Out Sidewalk VaultView of “Interior” Public HallwayShort Section 1; Artist Housing, Makerspaces, Vaults, Public HallwayShort Section 2; Artist Housing, Makerspaces, Vaults, Public HallwayLong Section; Artist Housing, Makerspaces, Vaults
Thesis:
Plug and Paint SOHO
08/2021 - 05/2022
DEUS: 088/26812—81
REX-13: 978-0882681/283This proposal argues that experiential consumerism was killed by the COVID-19 pandemic. It envisions a SOHO that offers a street level free of conventional shopping by bringing working artists into vacant ground-floor retail spaces.
Situated on the corner of Broadway and Howard Street, Plug & Paint SOHO takes over four ground floor vacancies, all adjacent to one another. By removing all existing party walls and reinforcing the structure before doing anything else, the site becomes a blank slate to ‘plug-in’ programs that serve the SOHO neighborhood: housing and arts in this case. In SOHO and the surrounding neighborhoods, there is nearly three million square feet of vacant ground floor retail space while in contrast, a widespread housing shortage parallels this boom in vacancy.
The common unique feature of the chosen sites is the historic vaults present under the sidewalk of each site. The vaults are reinforced and hollowed out, folding the sidewalk from the street level into the site and bringing the public into the vaults. The project aims to bring back to SOHO the experimentation and liveliness of the 60s and 70s, while offering a new three dimensional street experience.
The program chosen to achieve this is housing - killing two birds with one stone - and allows artist to live in the vacant ground floor spaces. Free-standing artist units were designed to plug into the ‘ghost’ of the retail space. This allows for artist housing while offering to the public the ability to see art being made from the street.
View Looking Towards BroadwayView Looking Down Howard St.View of Hollowed Out Sidewalk VaultView of “Interior” Public HallwayShort Section 1; Artist Housing, Makerspaces, Vaults, Public HallwayShort Section 2; Artist Housing, Makerspaces, Vaults, Public HallwayLong Section; Artist Housing, Makerspaces, Vaults