“NEIGHBOR TO NEIGHBOR” IS A CO-OPERATIVE HOUSING STUDY BY ^{ANDREW CHEE} AND I.

An open framework for co-operative housing designed around multiple scales of collective spaces, adapted from the reuse of formerly privatized commercial buildings in an industrial neighborhood in the Bronx, NYC.

Working to extend the neighborhood’s existing social infrastructure, the project positions collective space as the primary part to whole with the existing buildings repurposed as a community center and allotment garden. With these spaces of gathering as the focal points of the site, housing is then organized to surround it, creating conditions of reception and support across scales. The project is titled “Neighbor to Neighbor” as a reflection of our design process, which views architecture as the mediums through which neighbors create collective relationships.

We seek to create contextual conditions for living, to provide neighbors with the opportunities to define their own spaces, as “a form of relations, condition[s] of comparisons instead of an established arrangement of positions... in favor of the idea of a network of communicating and negotiating social spaces that are not defined in terms of a fixed identity” (Stavrides). Through the project, we seek to question established norms of large scale housing, always keeping in mind the question, “How can architecture better act as mediums for engagement across neighbors?”.