rooftop project
The island of Manhattan is conceptually synonymous with structural verticality, yet tucked between the towering postmodernism of Downtown and the lofty Gotham stylings of Midtown sits a low rise 19th century tenement community, the Lower East Side. Rampant disinvestment lasting decades left this working class neighborhood’s six story housing stock sagging, crumbling, and often abandoned. Over the past century elaborate proposals had been devised to “regenerate” the area, most requiring demolition of the neighborhood. Few ever came to came to fruition. In a curious turn of fortunes, the LES is currently undergoing an uncharted growth spurt, playing host to an innumerable quantity of structures rising from the rooftops of its aging tenement buildings. Manhattan’s primeval need for verticality is being satiated by the construction neighborhoods quite literally on top of pre-existing ones.
As if gestating inside for decades, modern structures are rapidly bursting forth fully formed out of tenement rooftops. Wireless technology and satellite TV have caused increasing quantities of mysterious mechanical apparatus and blank brick forms to appear upon the horizon. Unthinkably large towers of 10-20 stories are sprouting from empty lots, dwarfing their lo-fi neighbors. Together these constructions are physically and psychologically carving out an airborne community fundamentally dissimilar to everything located six stories below; it’s become an aerial suburbia.
This series of photographs focuses specifically on the rooftop additions, articulating the underlying sociopathic semiotics inherent within their existence by highlighting their antithetic nature towards their host neighborhood. They explore the atypical evolution from “downscale” straight to luxury penthouse in an area ever so recently known for its militant affordable housing activism. Shot from the street level, the photographs demonstrate the superiority complex these new buildings harbor towards their aging tenement parents, revealing a burgeoning exclusive enclave, hidden in plain sight, high above the working class stylings of the street. These structures are not mingling with low rent neighbors, but usurping them by cutting down upon the little light and air these dwellings already have. The photographs trace as these lofty shapes attempt to blend with their neighbors, or jut uncomfortably out into uncharted air space. They give identity to this impromptu consumption of urban space.
As if gestating inside for decades, modern structures are rapidly bursting forth fully formed out of tenement rooftops. Wireless technology and satellite TV have caused increasing quantities of mysterious mechanical apparatus and blank brick forms to appear upon the horizon. Unthinkably large towers of 10-20 stories are sprouting from empty lots, dwarfing their lo-fi neighbors. Together these constructions are physically and psychologically carving out an airborne community fundamentally dissimilar to everything located six stories below; it’s become an aerial suburbia.
This series of photographs focuses specifically on the rooftop additions, articulating the underlying sociopathic semiotics inherent within their existence by highlighting their antithetic nature towards their host neighborhood. They explore the atypical evolution from “downscale” straight to luxury penthouse in an area ever so recently known for its militant affordable housing activism. Shot from the street level, the photographs demonstrate the superiority complex these new buildings harbor towards their aging tenement parents, revealing a burgeoning exclusive enclave, hidden in plain sight, high above the working class stylings of the street. These structures are not mingling with low rent neighbors, but usurping them by cutting down upon the little light and air these dwellings already have. The photographs trace as these lofty shapes attempt to blend with their neighbors, or jut uncomfortably out into uncharted air space. They give identity to this impromptu consumption of urban space.
