spatializing the individual identity in the city
HOUSING & JOURNALS
New York Housing Studio | 2007
Assoc. Prof. Peter Goche
Public and private. The Lower East side of Manhattan and the leftover tenements of the 1920s served as the setting for an exploration into the concept of housing.
We started with an ethnography assignment. I observed a middle-aged woman and her life in her home. Given the brief time we had, I became frustrated with the lack of information she offered openly. I began to look for clues in her space. I took a picture of her bookshelf in the apartment; it made her uncomfortable. It was located in a public zone, yet it gave her away.
The exploration revolved around transition between what is public and what is private in an apartment in the city. The face presented to the world, plastered on the windows, framed for all to see, but then there was the room in the back… The most intimate space, where one’s journals are kept. The apartment building became a shelf of subjects, with their own framed windows and with their own journals. On the ground floor the transition was turned on its end. All those journals from the shelves above are published and sold on the street.
For all to see.