Project by Ayesha Bega
This project investigates the relationship between the inside and the outside, the public and the private, and the architectural porosity that can exist between them. Drawing on Loisaida’s tenement infrastructures, everyday life, and photographic archives, the project maps the infrastructures, revealing how a sense of belonging is created and negotiated as one navigates a new city, where the need for community is most apparent. Tenement living, characterized by density across generations, often extended beyond the apartment unit, with daily life occupying the building’s edges through stoops, fire escapes, stairwells, and kitchen windows. These infrastructures, designed for function and safety, were adapted into sites of pause, interaction, and informal social exchange. By mapping these ephemeral moments, the project reimagines these conditions as architectural strategies. Connecting the ground, façade, core, and roof creates a continuous terraced terrain that wraps around the voids, where movement, moments, and the life that moves between unfold without disrupting domestic privacy.
