Fatima Islam
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© 2024 Fatima Islam

The Commons

Spring 2024, Parsons School of Design

Advisor: Hana Kaseem, Maria Linares Trelles
Design Studio 4 — Thesis 
In the age of globalization and increased mobility, more and more people live in cookie-cutter mixed-use residential towers built for standardization. As a result, city neighborhoods have become homogenous with few opportunities for spontaneous discovery or connection. 

This project responds to this isolated, homogenous landscape by taking the form of a third place—a hybrid, communal, in-between space for both spontaneous dialogue and introspection. Unlike the usual, overdefined, programmed collective spaces, it takes advantage of the ambiguous zones like lobbies, hallways, and entrances of these mixed-use residential towers. Breaking from the building container, this intervention will support the neighborhood as ‘a commons’ that allows the users—residents, office workers, custodial staff—affordances to utilize the space to gather, share stories, or read, alone or together. 
Self-ethnographic lens applied to the domestic common room to make visible relationships between objects, rituals and space.
Self-ethnographic lens applied to the domestic common room to make visible relationships between objects, rituals and space.

Self-ethnographic lens applied to the domestic common room to make visible relationships between objects, rituals and space.
Self-ethnographic lens applied to the domestic common room to make visible relationships between objects, rituals and space.
Self-ethnographic lens applied to the domestic common room to make visible relationships between objects, rituals and space.

Site and Context 

Capturing one hour of one day in the form of cataloging facades in Chelsea, New York City as part of a contextual integration study, presented in a format inspired by Sanzo Wada’s Japanese Dictionary of Colour Combination. Initial sketches were done on site with wax pencils and later developed into color swatches.



Collage as methodology
Series of collages depicting themes explored in this project, such as the individual and collective, transparency, latency, encounter, and material memory. In this project, I have returned to collaging again and again as a tool for design exploration and metaphor for the layering of experiences, materials, and stories that define this common space. Through collaging, I am able to analyze and visualize the connections between form and materials.

Individual and Collective
Transparency, Encounter and Materiality
Transparency, pause and conversation
Ambiguity and material memory

Design Investigations

While investigating the latent possibilities of such a ‘commons,’ a number of concepts were unpacked, including affordances—qualities or properties of a space or object that determine how it could be used—and the perception of privacy in its potential to evoke a sense of safety while inhabiting public space. These spatial features were explored through design elements such as a sitting landscape and adjustable curtains that help to organize the interior. 
Exploration of forms that act as a landscape for different ways of sitting and lounging in a public space.



Design Proposal - The Commons
Drawing from The Paris Salons` focus on conversation, the exchange of ideas, and spontaneity, The Salon is a space for contemplation, storytelling, and discovery. The flexible layout allows for the transformation of the space based on the users’ needs for spirited dialogue, quiet reading, hosting book readings, or writing workshops. The design incorporates a series of thresholds—such as areas for storing coats, removing shoes, and washing hands, paired with a transition into a collective library, pantry and kitchen—that guide visitors through the space, culminating at a library where you can choose a corner to inhabit, alone or together, for a moment. A thoughtful arrangement of adjustable curtains and lighting creates varying levels of privacy and interaction.


Above: Translucent, adjustable curtains delineate transitions between communal and private zones and allow users to engage in defining their own spatial boundaries, thus influencing their behavior and interactions within that space. 

                                  







       
Design Proposal - The Archive
The Archive downstairs is an intimate take on a museum archive: a repository of community memory that captures intimate narratives via audio and video recordings, from visitors and residents of this neighborhood. Unlike institutionalized interiors, this space houses individual stories and memories, offering a window into personal histories, emotions, and memories tied to the objects. 

Oral storytelling, recorded directly by the visitors, facilitates the transfer of knowledge and preservation of narratives in their own voices. Where the upstairs is ephemeral, the Archive is compact. Informed by the idea of permanence, cast stone is the primary material in this space.

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Object Room (above) displays everyday objects like jewels, vieweing room (below) is an ode to stories told directly by those who experienced them, 
without the institution deciding which stories are important to preserve and share.







Above left:  Isometric floor plan of the downstairs Archive showing felt-curtained recording rooms, cork-panelled exhibition display walls and object room. Informed by the idea of permanence, cast stone is the primary material in this space. Above right: Exploded ISO dissecting the layers of the Archive,  where stories are spoken, recorded and shared.  Metamorphic shapes and materiality of cast stone finish evoke the site’s past as a stoneyard. Below: