Maya McGlynn

A Protective Space is designed to offer rehabilitative services free of cost to people in New York City, where they are desperately needed. In my plan, I employed an empathetic adaptive reuse approach, repurposing a historic brick-and-steel schoolhouse in the East Village as a place of refuge where people suffering from opioid addiction can rest and recuperate and benefit from alternative methods of healing. Through this project I intend to draw attention to the lack of access to rehabilitative services, which remain accessible mainly to the privileged. Those that are available to the broader public are often sited in peripheral areas of the city. By making space for these services where they are needed, we reframe our relationship to the world around us. An approach to adaptive reuse centered on empathy, generosity, and humility can repair legacies of systemic disregard for and stigmatization of people who use or have used opioids.