by Luis Miguel Pizano
As their communities become threatened by rising temperatures and shifting agricultural patterns, broad swaths of people will be forced to migrate to geographies that offer the promise of a stable future. In migrating from one country to another, the human body requires support from
social programs that provide essential services, including housing and legal assistance. However, these programs are often premised on and capitalized through a logic of extraction that undermines the collective’s
ability to mediate the impact of extractive flows.
The manipulation and divestment of these programs threaten the welfare of migrants, climate refugees, and
asylum seekers, whose livelihood is increasingly compromised by climate-related changes. St. Mark’s Churchon-the-Bowery is a unique space for the expression of progressive ideas, having served as a primary anchor for the artistic, political, and revolutionary movements of the
East Village in the 20th Century. In 2020, the church
and its grounds continue to serve as a refuge for political dissidents, having acted as a caregiver for protesters as late as the summer of 2020.
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“Fragility of Infrastructure”
The St. Mark’s Sanctuary Network generates a community-minded platform, which extends the protective infrastructure of church, site, and community through a series of network-based program tiers. Each tier is coordinated around a set of predominant functions, including temporary housing, collective kitchens for resident and community use, and service “pods” that house legal counsel, advocacy, and small-scale market spaces.
Integral to this system is a circuit of insulated pipes that are served by on-site plumbing and heating, allowing St. Mark’s to feed the program tiers. The project may respond to policy changes and emergency climate events through the rapid deployment of its construction logic. Project materials emphasize minimal carbon footprint, including Compressed-Laminated Timber walls and floor slabs and off-the-shelf steel scaffolding. When unoccupied by the sanctuary users, the stackable, vertically connected housing units can be shared by artists from Danspace, the site’s primary host institution.
