Mending Fractures: Scales of Social Connectivity

Studio: Core III
Year: Fall 2022
Critic: Christopher Leong
Collaboration: Kelvin Lee
Size: 258,000 SF
Housing, Urban Design, Community






The site located in the South Bronx has a history of fractures. In 1956, the Major Deegan Expressway was extended directly through open green space and pedestrian walkways, creating a precarious infrastructural network that remains today. The surrounding community itself has had a difficult relationship to ownership of its land and housing; the South Bronx has been home to many grassroots organizations that have over the past few decades needed to advocate for themselves, particularly the Latinx and Black communities.

Our project aims to create connections at multiple scales through affordable and collective housing. At an urban scale, the housing collective connects to La Finca Del Sur community garden to expand their footprint, programming, and outreach as well as reconnect pedestrian access across Major Deegan Expressway. At the unit scale, the project eliminates traditional corridors by introducing the joint: a central form of vertical programming and circulation that serves as residential egress while encouraging overlaps of intimate interactions. Through alternative systems of collective land ownership, long-term affordability and stability allows South Bronx residents to connect to their neighborhood. 

Our new housing framework is social connection at multiple scales.





Massing Diagram
Site Axonometric
Typical Floor Plan
Exterior View
Joint Diagram
Ground Floor Plan
Bridge View
1’ = 1/4” scale model


MANIFESTO



Housing is social connection at multiple scales.
Housing creates opportunities for intimate relationships while connecting to the broader collective.
Housing connects the individual with the community and bridges fractured legacy.
It facilitates impromptu interaction between households and allows flexibility for any form of relationship to live comfortably.
Housing provides stability and collective empowerment through cooperative residential participation.