Inhabiting the Third Space: Architecture of the Displaced

A city’s economic, social, and cultural activities create contact zones where different groups collaborate, compete, and negotiate. The physical layout of cities can facilitate contact or deter it. Although Los Angeles is very diverse, it presents a unique phenomenon in which multiple communities are divided by invisible barriers creating disparities in resources, opportunities, and quality of life. One of the most extreme barriers in LA, occurs between Skid Row and the Arts District. In my thesis project, I reimagine this contact zone as an inhabitable Third Space where individuals are invited to negotiate their cultural and social identities. As a type of beast fable, it creates a landscape of the displaced – a pet sanctuary, to a non-profit research headquarters, to a museum. In this new third space, through making everyone displaced, a new social order can emerge.