Project by Ana Hauser, Jonny Liboyi, James Haynes
129 MacDougal Street operates as a container, a theatrical set for layered and often unseen histories. From the Underground Railroad to Eve Adams’ Tearoom, Nickolas Muray’s studio, Hanlan and Associates, and La Lanterna, the site has continually hosted shifting social, cultural, and political narratives while its architecture has changed only minimally. Acknowledging this continuity, the project adopts an ethic of restraint and adaptability rather than formal replacement. The intervention introduces a sponge garden that transforms the basement into an infrastructural stage capable of retaining, filtering, and redistributing water, while simultaneously functioning as a jazz club. Environmental performance and cultural performance are intertwined, allowing the space to oscillate between utility and expression. Rather than asserting a new architectural identity, the project acts as a temporal performance within an ongoing script, extending the site’s legacy of convergence, improvisation, and reuse.
