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Reframing the Lodger in Collective HousingYale School of Architecture—Spring 2021
Collective Housing—New York, NY
Critic—Pier Vittorio Aureli with Emily Abruzzo
Partner—Martin Carillo Bueno
Honor—Feldman Prize Nominee, Featured in Retrospecta 44
The housing ecosystem of New York City is dominated by the nuclear family apartment. Ironically, the Citizens Housing & Planning Council states that only 17% of NYC residents conform to this typological identity, with at least 57% dwelling alone or in groups with other unrelated adults—often in pursuit of more affordable rent. What’s more, a recent study by Praxis exposed an unsurprisingly significant number of “illegal” households, representing the highly precarious living arrangements that are unaccounted for by these official surveys. This condition is amplified in Manhattan where the high value of land has exacerbated such dwelling arrangements, rendering the landlord in a position of utmost power. As a result, domestic misfits who don’t conform to the nuclear family ideal are forced into the shadows throughout the city, unable to find truly flexible or affordable housing downtown.
This project claims a series of developable lots across lower Manhattan as sites for an interconnected network of housing which offers an alternative to the hegemony of profit-driven developments that favor the nuclear family.
A new dwelling paradigm is proposed, predicated on the assumption of diverse domestic needs, including more flexible options for length of stay. The new subject of this typology, the “lodger,” is inspired by the temporary dwellers of the historic Tenement Houses and Residential Hotels—now bygone typologies that once offered a wide range of dwelling options based on a gradient of housing infrastructure and the professionalization of domestic labor. This project invokes the diversity of these domestic arrangements as a means to translate the collective ownership of land into an expanded menu of inclusive and cooperative modes of living downtown.
