Since the 1980s, New York City’s commitment to the construction of decommodified housing eroded in favor of a neoliberal strategy—enticing private developers to build affordable housing through the disposal of public land. This tactic often relies on the longstanding, yet short-sighted practice of marginalizing critical urban infrastructure to maximize space for profitable land uses at the center. Under these conditions, affordability remains insufficient and available city land dwindles.
The thesis asserts architecture’s agency to act within and against capitalism’s tendencies through alternative financial models. While conventional trajectories of privatization and peripheralization persist, this thesis advocates for an alternative symbiosis: a model of public-collective co-ownership. An expanded infrastructure for housing is made possible through the maintained location and capital investment of a garbage truck garage in Astoria, Queens. Embedded in architectural form, this mutually-reinforced hybrid prioritizes durability, self-determination, and generosity—values absent today in conceptions of housing and public infrastructure.
The city has proposed the relocation of a 100 year old Department of Sanitation garage in Astoria, Queens.
The garage is currently surrounded by two large public and cooperative housing developments built in the 1950’s.
The structural system can be read as a financial model, with the concrete super-structure financed by the city, and the wooden infill interiors developed by the cooperative.
A system of mutually beneficial public-collective co-ownership is created. Each party has their own distinct development responsibilities to produce a shared whole.
A standard parking garage superstructure of precast concrete is infilled and subdivided with a wood structure to create 6 floors of housing.
The sanitation garage is housed across two floors at the base of the building.
In section, the building hybridizes between the depth needed for the garage and the ideal depth for housing. The qualities of the unit interiors alternate between pre-cast concrete and wooden beams.
The asymmetry of the plan (residual from the garage’s needs) creates an opportunity for hybridizing a single-loaded corridor with point-loaded circulation. Creating externalized access to the 2 central elevators, and clustering entrances around egress stairs. Still providing two means of egress for all units.
Four units are clustered around a double-height secondary lobby. The highly efficient qualities of the garage are inherited as generosities through its occupation as housing.
The hallway is externalized as an extension of the living space. Here, the junction between residential and industrial can be felt directly, their construction colliding and their tenures nested.
