In the gentrification of cities today, artists have led the transformation of many neighborhoods, with the unintended side effect that these areas become so expensive that they out price the very artists that made them destinations in the first place. This makes artists a migrating flock, continually acting as urban transformers. To subvert this process, Art of Capital aims to foster coexistence among manufacturers, artists, and small and mass retailers to create a resilience loop.

Art of Capital focuses on New York’s Garment District and Hell’s Kitchen neighborhoods, adjacent neighborhoods that also connect various scales of the city (high rises of Midtown East versus brownstones of Hell’s Kitchen) and character (fine art galleries in Chelsea and the pop culture of Times Square). In these neighborhoods, I identified odd spaces—the small leftover space nested among fully maximized development, which are the byproduct of the Manhattan grid system. They are often low cost and have potential for small business and art incubation.

The project aims to introduce unconventional types of art spaces, emerging out of this present day context, to blur the lines between economic and cultural capital.