SENS[E]ATIONS
RJ Millhouse
2023 Fall Residency
When and where I enter into the architectural conversation is 2006 when the mixed use development master plan that I focus on was approved. The Master Plan was designed by Frank Gehry. The same year that the city did not extend People of Color in Crisis (POCC) and Black Pride with a public event permit. Then in 2014 the Atlantic yards project was renamed Pacific Park. Pacific park is a 22-acre mixed used 22 acres in downtown Brooklyn that l includes approximately 6 million square feet of residential space (6,430 units of affordable and market-rate housing), the Barclays Center, 247,000 square feet of retail use, approximately 336,000 square feet of office space and 8 acres of publicly accessible open space. The project plan permits a program variation which allows for up to 1.6 million square feet of commercial space. The project also includes major transportation improvements, including a new storage and maintenance facility for the LIRR and a new subway entrance to the Atlantic Terminal Transit Hub, the third largest hub in the City. My project demonstrates the timeline of the development project and the material consequences of the development including the closing of Langston’s Brooklyn—the last Black LGBTQ owner bar in Brooklyn. It closed in 2019. In 2021, happiness lounge closed its doors. These two nightclubs were sites of pleasure and leisure, but most importantly sites of care for Black LGBTQ Brooklynites.
People
