Competition: Van Alen Paris Prize

The competition, “Cultural Information Exchange: A temporary building on Wall Street”, called for proposals for the design of a temporary structure that functioned as an information center, exhibition and gathering space for newly arrived residents of lower Manhattan. The competition was especially interested in potential social and political opportunities such an intervention would engender.

My proposal reconciles the historic transformation of the site with its current direction: the influx of residents into the corporate realm of Wall Street. A detailed historical analysis of the site uncovered that Wall Street ended at the East River with a dock and a flourishing slave market. The design explores the process of remembrance through the re-conceptualization of the slave market, providing a disturbing juxtaposition of Trade: stock exchange, human exchange and the exchange of flesh. The building program integrates the meat market (one of the competition’s suggested community services) and a museum of the former slave market, exploring the grotesque implications of considering one’s self a piece of flesh.