Homeless in Midtown Manhattan

Abstract

With Midtown's income gap increasing significantly, affordable housing has become more and more difficult to find, leaving many New Yorkers Homeless. This thesis sets out to understand how homelessness and the built environment interact with one another and to which extent the architectural profession can make a positive impact on homelessness in Midtown New York City. The resulting design project is a 60,000m2 mixed-use complex in the heart of Midtown that centers around Covenant House, a non-profit organization serving homeless and trafficked youth. The design explores the tension between safety and public integration, the human and the city-scale as well as low- versus high-income users. Lincoln Gardens, the shared identity that the complex operates under, is a lush urban oasis with an intricate sequence of introverted public spaces on the ground floor that offer refuge from the hectic streets of Midtown. With sustainability as one of the core values, the incorporation of a timber diagrid structure as a tube-in-tube system results in minimizing the amount of concrete required in the foundation and core and allows for an open floor plan that will be adaptable to the needs of future users. The wooden high-rise stands out in the steel and glass city-scape of Midtown, embodying the goal of an inclusive city within the neoliberal framework of New York.