Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Rooftop
Lower East Side, Manhattant
Client: BRC Clyde Burton House Size:
800 SF
NYC Rooftop is a space for recreation and respite atop a Single Room Occupancy (SRO) apartment building in the LES in Manhattan, and is where 33 formerly homeless people have found a permanent home thanks to the BRC, who manages permanent and transitional housing projects across the city.
1+1+ Architects collectivised with other NY architects, landscape architects, engineers and fabricators under Design Advocates to design a multi-purpose rooftop lounge and sensory garden that provides Clyde Burton residents a place to eat, play games, garden and relax outdoors. A variety of different spaces of convening are supported by a modular furniture system that could both fit up the elevator, and be rearranged to create different scales of social gatherings. As many New Yorkers experienced first hand, the Covid-19 Pandemic shut down outdoor recreation and playground spaces across NYC for months, and disproportionately left lower class, primarily black and brown New Yorkers, without access to exterior public spaces. The Clyde Burton House project reveals that NYC's endless, underutilized rooftops, lightwells and backyards are opportunities for residents to come together around shared gardens spaces within residential projects across the city.