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Architecture & design studio  
in New York led by Sasha Topolnytska.

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, TenBerke Architects was 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 project was led by the NoVo Foundation, a social justice foundation. 

At the earliest stages of the design process, the team spent a year listening, workshopping, and building consensus about envisioning an inclusive, welcoming, and empowering space together with representatives of the building’s future users, ranging from women’s rights activists to formerly incarcerated women, who provided 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.