How can architecture combat homeless? The homeless population has long been a group of ever-present and almost invisible people in urban areas around the globe. Architects have proposed many solutions to solve this problem, like public housing, hostile design, tiny cabins, etc. However, homeless is a complicated social problem that requires effort from multi-aspects. We don’t perceive architecture alone to be the permanent solution, but as a soother to improve the overall quality of homelessness’ lives in collaboration with related organizations.
Our project takes Skid Row, Los Angeles as a field operation. A typical intersection of Skid Row is often composed of 6 traffic lights/signs, 4 light poles, 2 fire hydrants, 2 trash cans, and 1 newspaper stand. Perceiving the whole block as a house, these public amenities, unnoticeable to us as passersby, are “furniture” to homeless people. In most scenarios, homelessness’ clusters form around these amenities, where they take blank walls, corners, alleys as permanent structural support for their temporary tents.
In response to the existing urban condition and structural languages of Skid Row, we propose 9 individual mobile stations, each with a specific program essential to improve homelessness’ life quality. The 9 stations are configured differently into the original street conditions of Skid Row in distinct formal languages: situated in empty lots, attached to street corners, cantilevered on blank walls, or hidden in back alleys. By structurally adopting the existing infrastructure parasitically, the 9 stations become part of the city’s fabric in symbiosis with the urban growth.
The project was developed during the course "Option Studio: Citizens of No Place" at the Cornell University. Advisor: Jimenez Lai.
KOOZ What prompted the project?
YN&EZ Objects of No Place is a collaboration project done for option studio “Citizens of No Place” led by Jimenez Lai from Bureau Spectacular. The studio investigated the severe homeless question in Skid Row, Downtown Los Angeles.
Los Angeles, one of the largest metropolitan cities with a population of approximately 18 million, is also home to one of the largest unhoused populations in the United States. The 4000-8000 unhoused people in Skid Row represent a high proportion of the overall population of only 85.000 residents in Downtown Los Angeles. The high population density of homelessness has labeled Skid Row as “unsafe,” “poor,” “dirty,” and turned the area into a dead zone.
As architects, we are trained professionally to constantly think of the relationship between humans, buildings, cities, and the environment; how can we provide some insightful solutions to the homeless question? Having already seen many housing projects brought out by architects and their failure, we want to design something unconventional, a brand new approach to this long-lasting societal dilemma. The solution should respond to the homeless population and contribute to economic sustainability and intervene with the urban fabric at the same time.
We take our role, not as builders but taking a step back as conceptualists of the neighborhood.
KOOZ What questions does the project raise, and which does it address?
YN&EZ Our design questions the fundamental values of what a “house” means. To people living on the streets of Skid Row, an average American “house” is a luxury that they can only aspire to. Their definition of a house is more accurately defined as a temporary shelter, where they would cling on to anything they can find on the streets— the back of a wall, a lamppost, a trash pile, fire hydrants— most of them unnoticeable to us when we come across them. These findings inspired us to re-envision the neighborhood of Skid Row as a supersize house with all the amenities as its “furniture.” We design, then, multiple functional “rooms” with essential facilities that enhance life quality.
The second question is whether architecture has the ability to solve the housing crisis by providing more “houses,” or is it merely an idealistic but unrealistic approach? We found that even though housing projects successfully accommodated a small population of homeless people from the street into a four-side-wall room, they didn’t solve the problem, with more than half of them returning to the street within the next few years. Even though a housing project is not our solution to homelessness, we believe that architecture can at least alleviate the problems by providing necessities that improve the living quality of the homeless. This belief led us to reconsider the border of architecture and design our nine mobile stations.
KOOZ How does the project approach the issue of homelessness in our contemporary society?
YN&EZ As designers who are trained professionally to envision the future of buildings and the urbanscape, to what extent can architects help to ameliorate the endless problems of homelessness? When researching past precedents, we noticed some persistent underlying problems when approaching the problem by constructing subsidized or homeless housing. Many of the existing support organizations in Skidrow, such as Skidrow Housing Trust, Downtown Women’s Center, Food Distribution Center of the Midnight Mission, have had years of experience and encountered many unfruitful paths. Learning from their experiences, we realized that there is no single solution to homelessness in the end. We take our role, not as builders but taking a step back as conceptualists of the neighborhood. Starting first with re-designing the daily routines and footprints of those living on the streets, the project we propose acts as a small but continuous renovation of the foundational infrastructures of Skidrow. Each intervention becomes a part of the urban fabric.
KOOZ How and to what extent is this condition tied to the notion of dwelling?
YN&EZ Starting with background site research of the history of Skid Row, we investigated the living conditions of homelessness. We soon noticed that a typical house, or conventional notion of a dwelling, is not what is needed. Sleeping on the street or within a four-sided wall does not really make a difference when people don’t have access to household facilities, like toilets, chargers, kitchens, to maintain their basic life. Therefore, our project proposes a disassembly of a dwelling with each amenity scattered around the city and merged with the existing urban fabrics. The project is a giant “house” covering six blocks of Skid Row. Compressing facilities that are functionally interconnected into one station makes it more economically feasible to maintain and convenient for homeless people to use.
KOOZ How does the project approach and address the condition?
YN&EZ Instead of approaching the housing problem from a conventional lens by designing another “Midnight Mission”, our project emphasizes the essential needs of unsheltered people. Taking a typical intersection at Skid Row as a field operation, we proposed nine individual stations, each responding to one of the nine problems we evaluated through the previous research that we believe is essential to improve homeless people’s life quality.
The nine stations are configured differently into the original street conditions of Skidrow, for example, in an empty lot, a street corner, a blank wall, or a hidden alley. Each adopts a distinct formal language and a routine to interact with the architecture and the urban pattern. Through time, the nine stations essentially become a part of the infrastructure and urban fabric of the city, where it reforms not only the lifestyle but also the policies of living in Skid Row.
The nine stations essentially become a part of the [...] urban fabric of the city, where it reforms not only the lifestyle but also the policies of living in Skid Row.
KOOZ What is for you the power of the architectural imaginary?
YN&EZ The role of architects is “painters of the utopia”, where we often have the opportunities to idealize the best results of something, even though they can be unrealistic. Architecture is always functioning within a pre-existing context. That is, we do not have a tabula rasa on which to work, but must add to existing cityscapes and act as storytellers who continue writing history. The power of architectural imagination lies in its ability to visualize the possible future scenarios through which worthy ideas can be spread and shared. In this sense, architectural imaginary is the in-between zone that bridges reality and fiction, the present and the future, and breeds countless possibilities that can reshape the world.
