Making Housing Home
Participatory research and photo-texts on making home and self in affordable housing, in collaboration with WHEDCo
An original photographic-narrative research project, “Making Housing Home” explored how residents build their sense of home within 3 unusual and thoughtfully-architected New York affordable housing developments. Two were developed by the Urban Development Corporation (udchousing.org) in the 1970s: Marcus Garvey Village in Brownsville, Brooklyn and Eastwood on Roosevelt Island. A third was an adaptive re-use project of the non-profit developer WHEDCO, which opened in the late 1990s, Urban Horizons in the South Bronx.
Exhibited: The Center for Architecture|New York, 2007
Considering how lives are constructed within physically-built spaces, Gabrielle asked residents in each building to give her tours of their homes and explain where in their spaces they felt most comfortable, most at home. Through the photographs and excerpts from residents’ tours, the viewer can feel the important role thoughtful housing and long term maintenance play in turning spaces into places which allow individual identities to grow and flourish.
Exhibited: National Arts Club, 2004 // UC Berkeley, 2006 // the Center for Architecture|New York, 2007
Published: Places Journal, 2007
Exhibited: The Center for Architecture|New York, 2007