Architectural Politiscapes

Isabella Joseph

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) houses 1 in 14 or roughly 400,000 New Yorkers and is the largest remaining public housing authority in the country. The historical shift towards neoliberalism and the dismantlement of the welfare state has led to the disinvestment in public infrastructure and public housing epitomizes this estrangement. The result is an anachronistic planning model that must confront evolving, intangible forces, including time, politics, economics, and environment.

How have and how do these forces influence our city’s public housing politiscape? This project uses architectural representation in a rhizomatic method to explore, discover, and convey the complexities of the NYCHA politiscape. It focuses on a select group of four developments, King Towers, Taft, Johnson, and Jefferson Houses, in East Harlem.

The aim is to usurp our collective preconceived notions of public housing and in their place, foster a richer understanding of these controversial urban landscapes. In the context of the city’s acute affordable housing shortage, NYCHA’s own financial crisis, and imminent climate-change related disasters (or even pandemics), this renewed understanding has never been more desperately needed.

Still Frame Collage of King Towers First Floor Site Plan and Captivating Scenes from East Harlem NYCHA developments.

background.

The project rejects the unilateral narratives surrounding New York City’s public housing.

Rather than peddling the preconceived assumption that an architectural intervention can “fix” NYCHA’s issues, this project questions the role of the architect in issues of the built environment that supersede physical, built design.

What is the role of the architect in a crisis that transcends traditional architectural design?

How can architectural representation be used to design a new narrative that inspires a deeper reading of the NYCHA politiscape to all New Yorkers?

the language.

the site.

warning: this is not a physical design intervention.

Instead, this project operates within an alternative conceptual framework that repurposes architectural representation to design a new narrative surrounding NYCHA. By intentionally documenting NYCHA as it currently exists in relation to the selected “scales” of time, politics, economics, and environment, the goal is to imbue a richer understanding of the NYCHA politiscape.

This project argues that it is only by designing a new narrative that celebrates the multiplicity and complexity of NYCHA that an alternative future be imagined.

the studies.

Timeline Relating NYCHA and U.S. Housing Policy’s Key Moments

history recovered

What existed prior to the NYCHA politiscape?

Density Comparison Collage to Suburbian Levitown, a contemporaneous development to Johnson Houses.

Damage Parcels Traced on Existing East Harlem Map

Collage of Archival Damages Paid and Acquisition Maps from the NYCHA archives

Superposition of Developments and Damage Parcels

urban economics

How does the NYCHA politiscape influence the urban economic dynamics of its broader community? How have the laws of economics shape its behavior at every scale?