Project by Julio Viejo, Sofia Paniagua

This project is a typological study that addresses New York City’s concurrent shortages of housing and communal amenities through a deliberate reworking of the courtyard block. Drawing on Steven Holl’s “Alphabet City,” it begins with the ‘O’—an introverted ring valued for protection, legibility, and a stable social core—and evolves it into a porous system of sheared ‘L’ forms. The operation of slicing and rotating the ring opens the court to light, air, and circulation while establishing direct connections to the street and adjacent parcels. The result is a model that is protective yet connected: an introverted core that deliberately engages the city.

Designed with immigrant communities in mind, the building frames housing as both shelter and social infrastructure. Kitchens are positioned at the courtyard edge as primary sites of congregation, recognizing food as a universal practice that reduces isolation and supports cultural continuity. Program is organized across three scales of sharing: (1) room pairs that share a bathroom, (2) clusters that share micro-kitchens and dining, and (3) building-wide amenities—such as a fresh-food market, library, sport areas, and small parks—strategically clustered at sheared corners. These nodes concentrate activity and extend it outward through “leaky” terraces and patios, allowing interior life to register in the public realm.

Residential units act as flexible modules that accommodate diverse trajectories of settlement, from single rooms with shared baths to multi-bed shared rooms and family doubles linked by a shared bathroom. A calibrated vertical gradient balances density and quiet: lower levels support higher interaction and shared programming; upper levels offer more privacy for families and long-term residents.

At the urban scale, the project relies on reciprocity. It is pushed to the property line and dimensioned to interlock with future neighbors, amplifying courtyards rather than blocking them. Structural reciprocity—aligned cores and shareable frames—reduces costs and enables replication across a block or district. In aggregate, the system becomes an urban instrument that improves quality of life proportionate to residents’ contribution to the city. It is, fundamentally, a modified ‘O’ that lets immigrants build on their roots while assimilating collectively—protected yet plugged-in.