Acknowledgment Page Introduction Chapter 01

CHAPTER 01 Introduction

Statement

Shifting models of living, values, and digital information in recent years have created space for new ownership possibilities in domestic collectives. Through the development of a model of shared infrastructure, this thesis explores collective living with digital information. The project expands a definition of consolidation and distribution by critically repositioning existing modernist models of domesticity in favor of shared ownership between the ground, individual, and built environment.

Context

2.5 Quintillion bytes of information are created every day. There are 4.66 billion internet users whose individual information is stored across numerous data centers. There are 2,506 housing cooperatives in Manhattan New York, which does not account for the number of buildings or number of residents. $1,640 is the estimated value of Seward Park Cooperatives collective information with no incentive. With incentive that number is infinitely higher. These statistics seemingly random characterize an age, place, and value which together construct a context and an architecture. This context and architecture are as undefined as possible where each take on new sites to intervene. The over arching theme of these statistics and our context is media and information and how they exchange with and change the ways in which we live and the built environment. New models of living are no stranger to architecture. Namely the modernists and post WWII economics developers and city officials. Modern values clashed with capitalist pressures to consume,

abstract, and demolish. The tower in the park typology, also known as the cooperative, became a new unit of urban fabric even in the rigid grid of Manhattan. These cooperatives reorganized not only built fabric but communal resources, amenities funding, and outlook. This optimistic reorganization, however, became the demolition and displacement of communities. Specifically, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a number of cooperatives were constructed, therefore a number of communities demolished, and an even larger number of people displaced. This is an agenda of modernism and capitalism, consumption and reorganization atop a rich ground. Which brings us to the question: how can we engage these cooperatives today? While most perspectives on the products of modernism and capitalism are negative it did construct a catalyst for information and the possibility of shared resources and space facilitated by architecture. Today we see late capitalism1 and the sharing economy engaging these collectives on new grounds. One collective in particular is Seward Park Cooperative, the site for this thesis which proposes burying a computation center underneath Seward Park, three structures to facilitate exchange, and an ownership model for the residents. Preceding this history is the journey of how the ground was interrogated and represented. This journey includes the interrogation and representation of the body in relation to a collective. Dating back to Thomas Jefferson, the Yeoman and the division of land became a sociopolitical geographic ideal in relation to urban planning and lifestyle. This ideal, while it didn’t catch on, embedded itself in economic practices of land division, acquisition, and selling. It became an ownership model and was folded into forms of capitalism to come.2 Today, we see the lasting effects of these practices not only in tools such as ArcGIS but in our lifestyles, ownership models, and domestic spaces. Standing tall through the large architectural shifts of the mid to late 20th century are the tower’s in the park specifically the tower’s in the park of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The tower’s in the park of the Lower East Side stand on a the Settlement House’s ground breaking effect. Settlement house’s were typical homes that ran off of communal support and voluenteering. In 1893, Lilian Wald a teacher and nurse, moved with Mary Brewster into a Lower East Side Home on Henry Street.3 The home became a space where

Figure 02 (Top Right): Black Causus Dance. by Co-op City, 1970. Image accessed April 17th, 2022. Figure 03 (Direct Right): Array of surfaces from Manhattan, New York. Accessed April 9th, 2022. (CCBY Jack H. Foisey)

anyone could receive medical attention or other community resources. The Settlement House was inspried by British University students who created Toynbee Hall in London’s East End.4

“... Settlements did not see themselves only as service providers; they also intended to become centers for neighborhood reform.” 4

Framing the Narrative

Three interests inspired this exploration: a general interest in our current global context, an interest in new types of program associated with public/landscape, and a specific interest in new collective living models. The first interest has been a constant beginning before I began seriously studying architecture. This lead me down many paths such as researching and exhibiting work on Architecture that engages the digital world, multifamily housing projects through CD’s, dissecting adaptive systems, and the effects of architecture in global cities on the rest of the world. The second interest comes from a semester of landscape architecture that allowed me to explore a short history of landscape architecture culminating in a studio project that ran parallel to this thesis. The third, comes from a curiosity in how people live, from daily life to exceptional situations. Together these interests provided motivation and direction for the thesis.

Audience

This thesis exploration is directed towards the general public or more specifically anyone who is interested in architecture and how we collectively live today. The Domestic Collective is intended to start a conversation that goes further than discussion but prompts possible answers to collective problems that we all face today. Questions like: how can we own differently? what can the ownership of our digital information provide the general public? what does a space that facilitates the exchange between collectives and individuals look like? what does a space that supports a connection between us and

Structure

Literature Review (Chapter 02): This chapter examines the history of alternative representations of the human while establishing the need to take control of our excess data through architecture.

Design as Research 01 (Chapter 03): This chapter is explores a synthesis of the previous Design as Research, chapter 03, exploring an age, place, and value.

Design as Research 02 (Chapter 04): This chapter evidences site selection, analysis, and design tests in relation to Chapter 02 and Chapter 03.

Outcomes (Chapter 05): This chapter displays the final thesis presentation and details the final thesis proposal.

Critical Reflection (Chapter 06): This chapter is a thesis program retrospective, a critical look back at the thesis exploration from first explorations to final presentation.

Conclusion

This thesis exploration materializes possible architectural solutions by recognizing the spatial effects of the issues plaguing collective living. By doing this we can reposition nonarchitectural models to enact an architectural change generating solutions for contemporary domesticity. All of this, of course, being motivated by a larger interest and energy towards architecture, it’s history, and how can live differently.

Figure 04 (Top Right): Coop Peace Committee. by Co-op City, 1970. Image accessed April 17th, 2022.

1 Late Capitalism can be described as the end of capitalism sparked by industry and solidified by the information age. It can also be characterized by the sharing economy where value and competition are exhausted to the point of failure creating space for a new model. The term was first used by the economist Werner Sombart in Der Moderne Kapitalismus published between 1902 - 1927 to describe a stage of capitalism.

2 Le Corbusier and the Architectural Promenade, by Flora Samuel published in 2010, describes the idea that Le Corbusier (a symbol of modernism) designed with the idea that the body should move through a building in a specific sequence. The architectural promenade became something much larger. The promenade, during the rise of modernism, became a solidified form of urban planning, architecture, and capitalism. The movement of goods and people between the city and hinterlands created systems of exchange and boundaries of definition ossifing the metropolis and the hinterland. Resources became the currency of exhcange such as: peoples time and labor, physical material, gas, water, and fuel. The promenade played a large role in the development of capitalism reaffirming industrial scale production and the automobile.

3 Lilian Wald our history. (https://www.henrystreet.org/about/ our-history/lillian-wald/#:~:text=Born%20into%20a%20life%20 of,she%20founded%20Henry%20Street%20Settlement). Lilian Wald played a large role in the development of Settlement Houses in Manhattan along with the NAACP, United States Children’s Bureau, the National Child Labor Committee, and the National Women’s Trade Union League.

4 Jeffrey Scheuer, University Settlement of New York City. https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/settlement-houses/ university-settlement-of-new-york-city/). (directly from text) “NOTE: This history of University Settlement is taken from ‘Legacy of Light: University Settlement’s First Hundred Years,” a 32-page pamphlet written by Jeffrey Scheuer, 1985. The photographs and news clips were provided by Amanda Peck, Assistant Director for External Affairs and Donor Relations for University Settlement and its subsidiary organization: The Door.”

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