Thought About Leaving, Not Moving: Designing Conditions for Artistic Practice and Migration in the Spatial Production of Legitimacy
New York’s rail yards and infrastructural gaps form some of the city’s largest and most inaccessible territories. They are vast voids that divide neighborhoods while remaining spatially and culturally dormant. This project proposes the transformation of one such site, the Jamaica Yard, as a cultural pseudo-campus that treats immigration not as a temporary condition or political abstraction, but as cultural and economic infrastructure embedded within the American city. If immigration is foundational to American culture, then architecture must do more than house it, it must spatialize the conditions under which immigrants live, work, create, and belong.
Conceived as an artist village, the proposal weaves together live–work housing, artist studios, music venues, rehearsal and performance spaces, community facilities, gardens, and public plazas into a layered urban ecosystem. Rather than operating as a closed academic enclave, the campus functions as a porous cultural system, supporting immigrant artists, cultural producers, and neighborhood entrepreneurs while welcoming the broader public into spaces of gathering, celebration, and exchange. Housing, production, and performance are integrated with everyday urban life, positioning cultural work not as a marginal activity, but as essential infrastructure.
Where large-scale developments, like Hudson Yards, have historically converted infrastructural air rights into speculative capital, this project converts vacancy into civic hospitality: spaces designed to host, to mentor, and to make visible the creative, immigrant labor that sustains the city. Partnerships with nearby institutions expand educational access, professional training, and mentorship opportunities, flexible public venues cultivate music, food, and performance, and nearby public infrastructure serves as grounds for exposure, recognition, and belonging.
Y5 Thesis / FA2025 + SP2026
Partner: Laura Moldovan
Professors Carlyle Fraser, Philip Lee, + Elæ Moss Benedetto
This project serves as the first half of my thesis project, with the studio topic shaped around vacancy and its manifestations within physical, geographical, economic, and sociopolitical sectors. The Fall 2025 Semester was a research seminar, where the individual project direction was formed. The semester wrapped with site research, for which an algorithm was written to input desired data reflective of a specific user group, which then narrowed potential sites by neighborhood. Accompanying this semester’s research is an essay addressing my individual focus on sociopolitical and economic factors within the overarching topic of vacancy.
This thesis project is ongoing, and updates will continue to post as progress is made.