For three years, Antoine Yates lived with a pet tiger in his NYCHA-run Harlem apartment. After Ming inadvertently bit Antoine’s arm during one of their feedings, the NYPD deployed forty-five officers to remove Ming from the apartment. Officer Duffy abseiled from the roof and shot Ming with a tranquilizer dart. Unconscious and captured, Ming was transferred to an animal sanctuary.

Though extreme and dangerous, Antoine’s decision to stay indoors with a large predatory animal is not indicative of something wrong with him but rather an indictment of his environment, NYCHA, and the Black experience in America. The project responds directly to the NYCHA tenancy agreement, the pet policy, and the kitchen design guidelines through annotation and antithesis.

The proposal is the occupation of the roof. The occupation consists of a communal kitchen, a shed for shared tools – unfinished cans of paint brooms and appliances needed to support the occupation of the roof, and a network of mesh that allows residents to house an “unreasonable number of birds” alongside illicit cats, dogs and other pets that would be otherwise prohibited by NYCHA.

Each part of the roof is accessible to every species and interaction between the species is encouraged.