Gowanus Housing

Brooklyn, New York

This project is a fiction about the collective memories of the Gowanus Canal -exploring the poetic relationship between residential spaces and existing landmarks. Aldo Rossi's concept of Collective Memory and Kevin Lynch's "The Image of the City" drove the theoretical basis for this public housing.

The sightlines were volumetrically indexed to generate the form that frames critical views of adjacent landmarks and curates urban scale social activities, not just as the setting, but as an active participant of a rich ongoing urban narrative.

The result is a series of indexical negative spaces which are then converted into curatorial public places, that capture the dense spatial phenomenon of the canal, then channels it out to the urbanscape.

The series of mise-en-scenes frames and curate the landmarks while reinforcing the self-image of the users occupying these heightened public spaces. This mixture of a view and the participant being a cognizant part of the views facilitates events that are part of the collective memory of Gowanus Canal.