Hinako Nakagawa

This is a design project presenting entry, office, and auditorium spaces for the NoVo Foundation. NoVo is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women and girls around the world. The site, an existing building on 11th Avenue in Chelsea, served as a women’s detention facility beginning in the 1970s. In 2012, the building sustained major damage during Hurricane Sandy, and it has remained vacant since. 

The goal for this project was to create a space that facilitates communication between visitors and the office. In the same class, I developed the previous work called "Space To Walk," which is based on the idea that walking can create a natural communication. To create the space to walk, I divided spaces with columns of varying density. Without walls, the columns act like trees in a forest, producing paths of various sizes of spaces. 

Here I divide each space with glass walls and columns, so that workers and visitors can sense one another’s presence but maintain a sense of privacy. I also create passages on each floor to reconnect spaces. Multiple layers of passages create shadows like sunlight filtered through foliage. In this way, visitors feel as if they were walking through a forest.