This project explores the intersecting qualities of place, time, and identity through the work of a graduate design studio at Rice School of Architecture. “Identities of Self and Place in Sunset Park: The Unmaking of the Gowanus Expressway,” challenges students to activate a residual urban space through a broad reading of its surrounding cultural, physical, and programmatic site conditions. The project site, located beneath the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, is a typical example of how transportation infrastructure of the past bifurcated communities and sent neighborhoods into decline. Architecture designed through the lens of Place, Time, and People can produce responsive spaces that address historical injustices while allowing for multiple readings and experiences.

Students began their research with a design methodology based in both direct and remote observation of the project site. They examined the local conditions and expanded into the surrounding neighborhoods, searching for patterns in the constructed environment that reflected a community ethos, or a shared sense of belonging. Responding to the context, students identified and isolated found patterns that held potential for development as spatial experiences.

These exercises became the basis for the design of a community center annex for the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park. Using the spatial patterning developed through their research, the students articulated different facets of their selected patterns to generate a range of spaces and conditions—intimate and communal, private and public, interior and exterior. The designs expressed a cohesive reading of the project that emphasized the experience of shared community within a complex and diverse urban environment.

Images from the studio’s final projects, including photographs, sketches, renderings, and architectural drawings, will be presented along with the students’ written descriptions to convey their specific design intent and personal methodology within the broader course framework. The products of the studio’s work over the course of the semester show a clear relationship between the methodologies employed and the resultant synthesis of identity, place and structure. The work highlights the possibilities available to designers and architects in working to transform aging infrastructure into spaces of social interaction and community.