Brooklyn Designs site-specific installation competition entry, 2017 Winner

Ghost Stoep

Paula Allen, Yu Duk So

The Brooklyn stoop is in retreat. As the borough grows up and up, into high-rise multifamily housing, the stoop is in danger of becoming a vestige of a bygone era—of a time when connecting with people was fundamentally physical, occurring in real places rather than virtual spaces. Born in the Netherlands and brought to New Amsterdam, the American stoep was at once a status symbol; its size reflecting the owner’s means, a class separator; offering ascendance to the piano nobile or hidden passage to utilitarian spaces, and a social aggregator that provided the infrastructure for impromptu gatherings. While these aspects all arguably remain to some degree, the latter is most central to the contemporary characterizations of the stoop. As an important actor in Jane Jacobs’ ballet of urban life, the stoop sits at the boundary between private and public life, providing a familiar and friendly place where one is immediately granted an audience with the city.

Formworks proposes to construct a full-scale stoop made of ice. As an homage to the typology, it is an ephemeral assembly that will offer a very real place for connecting. It is conceived as a temporal metaphor rendered in ice, its undoing anticipated by impending and inevitable change. Lit from within, Ghost Stoep will be a lantern by night that beckons with a glowing evocation of home.

A stoop is transitional. As an interstice between public and private, it serves as a hub for neighborhood gossip, friendly chats, cocktails, card games and ball games, a place to linger, to wait, to meet, to watch, and to be found. It is where moments are stretched, from jubilant hellos to reluctant goodbyes. It is a place of celebrations, of contemplation, of engagement, and of repose.

Ghost Stoep is transitory. It is a wholehearted offering to the public that aspires to be a temporary hub of connection for the greater neighborhood of Brooklyn. It is a place to sit with friends and a place to encounter strangers. It is a a place to be seen, and a vantage from which to watch. It is a meeting place created with the explicit purpose of instigating conversation. And like its real-world counterpart, it will slowly vanish. What will remain are the connection made between the players, the day, and the lives that were provided a place to intersect.