The Migrant Landscape: Padrinos y Madrinas of Architecture

Abstract

Mexican migrants make the decision to uproot their lives, submitting to legal and social instability and housing insecurity in order to help provide better lives for their families. Through Hometown Associatiations (HTAs), migrants have collectively contributed small sums of money to fund large, infrastructural projects back in their hometowns. Through these networks, migrants have been able to transform the urban fabric of Mexico, creating what Sarah Lynn Lopez calls a ‘remittance landscape’.

However, the reverse side of this trade remains mostly unexplored. This project focuses on how migration between Mixteca Puebla in Mexico and Mott Haven in the Bronx can form a new, migrant landscape.

Prior to its dismantling in 1955, the Third Avenue El train served as a migration corridor between Mott Haven and South Ferry, drawing European migrants, as well as the tenement typology, into the South Bronx. This project seeks to reclaim the remaining urban void left by its track to cultivate a market space, park, and plaza which celebrate the migrant experience.

While Urban Renewal devastated the area by razing hundreds of tenements and introducing the ‘tower in the park’ typology to the area, this project proposes an intervention that integrates the urban scale to enable the immersion of a new Mexican migrant housing typology.

By importing Mexican architectural typologies, this project aims to find their synthesis within the Mott Haven urban fabric. This thesis proposes a new housing typology, collective financing structure, and urban space that celebrates Mott Haven, its history, and its migrant community.