Death & Life of the Buffer Zone

exhibited at “Sharing Models: Manhattanisms”- The Storefront for Art & Architecture. 2016

Collaboration with The Open Workshop

Death & Life of the Buffer Zone is a spatial inquiry into the politics of sharing. Sharing demands a collective realm—but also difference. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s notion of human plurality, the project asks how a city can hold diversity without flattening it.

Set in Inwood, Manhattan, the site is fractured into three “islands”: the mythic forest of Inwood Hill Park, the mid-century housing blocks, and a working subway yard. Each reveals a different urban layer—nature, domesticity, and infrastructure.

The proposal introduces a shared infrastructural thread—an elevated datum that stitches these islands together. This connective swath offers public access to the river, rail yard, rooftops, and park. Rather than erase difference, it frames it—creating a civic stage where distinct pieces remain legible, and sharing becomes spatially possible.