Cubicle Hotels

I participated in an architectural competition in New York City in 1987. The competition was called Vacant Lots and its purpose was to address the problem of urban deterioration in the outer boroughs of the city through the participant's intervention on one of several designated vacant lots.

My response to this problem was to establish an underground support system depicted through a board game played on several levels. The place I created was a bathroom, laundry, and dormitory accessible to the public as well as a soup kitchen. The idea was that this was a protected place where one could get away from the unwelcoming surface level of the city, when one was not meeting one's challenges, to rest a bit in preparation to take another try at succeeding there.

In the search for a sustainable cultural form, incorporating such an idea of shelter into general use for the whole public might solve a number of problems. Cubicle hotels, which were a residential form used in the late 1800s and early 1900s might be the basis of such a form.

A cubicle hotel is a multiple occupancy sleeping space with individual defensible bed spaces; a large room which sleeps many people, where each bed is a lockable cubicle, open on its top to the environment of the room. The defensible individual space would be small; the size of whole room would determine the sleeping capacity. The sprinkler system and the heating and cooling systems, as well as the supervision of the space, would be made to serve the one large room, and the cubicles would be "furniture" within it. The benefit would be that a minimum of resources would be devoted to providing a safe resting place to the maximum number of people. Even unsubsidized, such a place would be much more affordable than any current form of temporary residence, and could economically occupy places in the center of the city.

This would be a shelter for people who had lost their place to be, and as a subsidized feature of the city could take the place of homeless shelters, however, adding this type of housing to the ordinary housing options would solve several other problems as well. This could be a launching ground for people starting out, whose wages are not yet enough to allow them to buy independence in any other way. A cubicle hotel would be a step cheaper than a boarding house. This could be an inexpensive emergency travelling solution.

If what we see as  failed existence were merged with emerging independence, or exploration, and each of those conditions were cradled in health and safety, then, as a culture we would not be so divided or so cruel. All the services which one needs when failing, starting out, or exploring could become visible at the cubicle hotel. The true worth of such services would be visible too, since the usefulness of those services across the lines of human condition would be finally understood.