Thesis Abstract

Figure 1 - Collage of the political, social, and environmental ecologies illustrates their interdependent relationship and influence on climate change and social inequity.Inspired from "The Three Ecologies" by Felix Guattari. Done by Oliver Hadi.  

    
    What happens when you take modernistic and utopian architecture, mix it with segregationist politics, and build communities from scratch without the smallest understanding of how society works? You give birth to the “Towers in the Park”. In New York City, this past initiative led to the establishment of the biggest public housing project in whole North America, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Many decades later, we can see that the NYCHA projects have led to the isolation and segregation of the poorest residents of the city, increasing poverty and criminal activity. It is obvious now, that artificial communities such as NYCHA does not work for either the people who live in them, or to the larger urban community. Meanwhile, they act as a money sink with lack of founding and struggle to keep up with renovations and reparations that the degrading projects require.

    “The Prototype” is a building proposal that respects that coexistence of political, social, and environmental platforms and is seeking to achieve ‘effectiveness’ over ‘efficiency’. The building proposes a mixed used structure with a direct integration of public housing units. It will provide a response to decades long isolation through strategical inclusion. The building seeks to exploit architectural creativity to provide a solution to the increasing urban population, increasing rental costs, low-income resident inclusion while exceeding climate change mitigation and provide economic feasibility.

    The proposed structure seeks to become a visible example of social and environmental design to the building industry both city and nationwide. To turn fantasy into realism, the building intends to rethink architectural spaces and composition through the research and investigation of square footage allocation, flexible furniture design, smart and safe material integration, as well as prefabrication, design for disassembly, and building performance validification throughout the stages.