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Last updated Nov. 23, 2009.
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HOMELESSNESS
Positioning design as an effective tool for developing and improving preventative solutions to homelessness, Private/Public addresses the spatial needs of the homeless service providers who supply housing, health care, treatment programs, and drop-in centers to the city’s homeless and at-risk populations. Most homeless service centers in New York City are tucked away in marginal spaces, operating at odd hours in rooms often used by many other groups. These constraints require architectural innovation in terms of providing privacy and flexibility in the midst of a wide range of activities and programs. Emphasizing the possibilities for privacy within the public realm, the project complicates the separation between private and public spaces in the city.
On any given day, about 36,000 people are homeless in New York City.
However, less than 10 percent of the homeless population actually resides in the public spaces of the city typically associated with sites of homelessness: the street, the subway, abandoned lots and buildings. The majority of New York’s homeless, living in the city’s shelter system, consists almost entirely of families, all of whom are invisible to the public eye. This data does not include the thousands of New Yorkers who are at risk of becoming homeless within the year. These factors make it very difficult to delineate the boundaries of homelessness in the city. How can architecture address such an invisible and undefined institution?