Project by Levan Kiladze
/// Museum of Arabic Press / Works /// situates printing as both a cultural and civic practice. The project takes as its entry point the history of Arabic press production in Little Syria, foregrounding print as a means of creating a network within the urban fabric.
Print becomes a spatial driver, organizing the building through a CMYK logic of overlay and bleed, as three primary programs—museum, library, and printing—intersect to generate hybrid spaces of archive, publishing, and workshop. These overlaps structure the building vertically, producing continuity between reading, making, and displaying while maintaining layered gradients of public and private space.
The façade functions as a layered surface, translating interior programmatic overlays into varying degrees of transparency and opacity. Conceived as a slash within the urban fabric, the massing simultaneously frames the historic site and projects toward future forms of cultural production. Ultimately, the building itself operates as a printer, imprinting the legacy of the Arabic Press / Works onto New York’s future cultural landscape.
