OWS Goes on Hunger Strike to Occupy “Lent Space”

Architizer News

OWS Goes on Hunger Strike to Occupy “Lent Space”

December 5, 2011

This past Saturday, Occupy Wall Street protesters began their hunger strike “as part of a continued effort seeking sanctuary on Trinity Church’s unused land.” As the New York Observer reports, following their eviction from Zuccotti Park last month, Occupy Wall Streeters have turned their efforts to occupy a new home, specifically an unused open space owned by Trinity Real Estate and Trinity Church.

Known as Duarte Square, the plot of land at the intersection of Canal Street and Sixth Avenue is curiously comprised of both public and private land. While Duarte Park is City-owned, the larger enclosed portion of the square is privately owned by Trinity Wall Street. Moreover, the private space so coveted by OWS protesters is currently licensed for use to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for a temporary architectural and art installation known as “Lent Space,” designed by social architecture advocates and the latest firm to overhaul MoMA PS1’s courtyard space, Interboro Partners.

Read on.

Lent Space is characterized largely by its 7-ft-tall semi-permeable fence, which consists of a line of uniform, moveable plywood walls set on pivots to allow for different degrees of access. In classic Interboro form, the walls challenge their inbuilt notion of exclusion, not only by including an unglazed strip window at eye level, but also by doubling as inviting benches that can pivot to face one another in a tête-à-tête arrangement or turn away for greater privacy. By unlocking and pivoting different portions of the fence, the space seeks to facilitate an intermingling of disparate urban groups in the vicinity, from nearby office workers to “sidewalk mall” vendors selling fake handbags and t-shirts.

Though bound up in lofty ideas, the already discreet dose of social advocacy programmed in Lent Space has ground to a halt, as the installation is currently closed for the season. This means that its pivoting walls have their backs turned to the public, their benches definitively concealed, and the interior space more “interior” than ever in anticipation for the colder months ahead. Thus, not only is Duarte Square a privately owned public space like Zuccotti Park, but it is also the site of a currently inactive work of “social” architecture. What could be a more ideologically appropriate home for the recently evicted OWS movement?

Determined to “liberate” Duarte Square, OWS hunger strikers emerged with an ultimatum to Mayor Bloomberg, asking for permission to occupy the space currently licensed to the LMCC or face a hunger strike, which began this past Saturday. If Bloomberg submits, it will be interesting to see Interboro’s project being pushed to its limits, swinging to its very extreme and becoming the embodiment of unfettered access.