Project by Maya Yildirim
The Contemporary Arab American Studio Museum proposes the reveal as an architectural strategy to surface histories and cultural production often obscured within Manhattan’s urban fabric. Organized around past, present, and future programs, the project deploys sectional cuts, framed gaps, and mediated facades to stage dialogues between Little Syria’s historic structures and contemporary Arab American artistic practices. The history of Little Syria is navigated and revealed to contemporary art displays, with space for the community to reflect and make in the framing gaps between these past and present programs. Both the interior and exterior of the museum operates as an evolving, participatory framework in which architecture reveals, negotiates, and re-centers Arab American presence in the city.
