Staten Island is home to approximately 170,000 households, only 3% of which are intergenerational. Extended family networks are few and far between, and the saying “it takes a village” to raise a child continues to remain true.
Through a proposed Islamic legal endowment, the former grounds of Seaview Hospital are established as a waqf to imagine new opportunities for infrastructures of care. The endowment proposes a maternity village on Staten Island, guided by spiritual, clinical, and domestic rituals of kinship.
Drawing from Dolores Hayden’s “Non-Sexist City,” the traditional suburban block is inverted to create a central outdoor commons. The landscape is enclosed by a ring of services that redistribute care across the village, integrating clinical and holistic health services, childcare, short-term domestic support, and rituals of masjid (prayer) and wudu (ablution). Amidst fragmented familial networks, the project proposes a return to kinship at the extended family scale.
