One drawing, in the shape of a triangle, is the origin of this kaleidoscopic composition. The origin is a depiction of lower Manhattan in the 1600s - native flora and fauna, the Lenni Lenape, in a framework of wood, mud, and oyster shells. As the triangle mirrors outward, the history of lower Manhattan unfolds through the centuries. Each ring of reflection shows the same place at a different point in time. Dutch colonists, farming, bricks, and the nature clearings of the 1700s…. Immigrants, tenements, the Great Fire, the Brooklyn Bridge, and terra cotta cladding of the 1800s…. Cars, steel, concrete, and communication systems of the 1900s…. Conundrums of what is real or not, and the questionable nature of survival in the future. Compression of time and the juxtaposition of two different scales, the close ups versus the landscapes, allows us to contemplate human progress in the context of lower Manhattan. (The full size of the composition is approximately 5’ x 5’.)

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War-ravaged by political upheaval and nearly rendered uninhabitable by natural disasters, earth's refugees became ubiquitous. From the suffering and desperation, a manifestation to live with the earth and not just on the earth emerged. Scientists then developed a habitable living infrastructure known as Carbon Capture Refuge X (CCRX). This living infrastructure simultaneously provided a sustainable way of living while filtering carbon out of the atmosphere. Earth's magnetic field was utilized to suspend the CCRXs above the ground and sea, thus creating a floating habitable layer in the troposphere. As the CCRXs flourished and multiplied, the need for larger living infrastructures grew, and units began to connect and plug into one another. Some merged into floating farms and pastures, others into floating forests etc., gradually restoring microclimates and ecosystems that were nearly obsolete. The CCRXs now fill the sky in which there are no borders. They migrate freely, floating as one with the earth.

 
 

Today, social distancing has manifested a new definition of ‘together’.  The physical proximity of people and buildings have been reduced to the ‘virtual’. ‘Together’ we isolate, ‘together’ we work, and ‘together’ we zoom into the lens of our homes and struggles amidst a pandemic, the intrinsic fight for human rights, and survival of the everyday.

This drawing cuts a section through hexagonal pods that encapsulate our inhabited spaces. The hexagonal shape represents our self-proclaimed strength and efficiency around our designs, the same efficiency that circulated the virus with rapid speed. The hexagonal framework is deforming under the pressure of an evolving reconciliation for how we cope with the virus in our daily lives. Our pods are juxtaposed against one another revealing that we are closer ‘together’ than we think, and that we must act ‘together’ for the future.