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Architecture & design studio
based in Brooklyn, NY.

The Women’s Building

New York City, NY, USA
2019
Architect: TenBerke Architects
Image Credits: TenBerke Architects

Architecture & interior design,  adaptive re-use, community engagement Following an international competition, we were selected to design The Women’s Building, a new global hub for the women’s and girls’ rights movements. The project would transform the former Bayview Correctional Center, an abandoned women’s prison, into a place of activism and action. It would offer those working for girls and women the space, resources, and support they need to drive critical change. The NoVo Foundation, a social justice foundation, led the project.

At the earliest stages of our design process, we spent a year listening, workshopping, and building consensus about envisioning an inclusive, welcoming, and empowering space. We engaged with representatives of the building’s future users, ranging from women’s rights activists to formerly incarcerated women, who continue to provide invaluable perspectives on the project. This process has enhanced the project’s program and adjacencies, its balance between security and openness, and its treatment of the building’s deep history and discomforting past, but moreover, it has contributed to forming a community of future users with a sense of belonging and ownership.