The Block, The Stoop
PORCH : An Architecture of Generosity
19th Venice Architecture Biennale 2025
interview 01 - Pupa Francis (click for video)
interview 02 - Thomas Campbell (click for video)
Harlem is known for its porch - or stoop - culture. This is a geography of layered Black and other diasporas and migrations. Here, stairs, benches, cars, and the like participate in a concentrated zone that serves as a public yard : one which facilitates social life and absorbs critical needs for the marginalized and ‘designed destitute’. The porch is a living part of Harlem’s culture and care.
The Block; The Stoop window display for the 2025 U.S. Pavilion uses the same architectural language to distill these two protagonists - the Sankofa pavilion and the iconic Harlem Stoop - into a synthetic armature that echoes the canopy (above) and the stoop (below). Printed mesh strands are woven through the steel frame to enclose the window volume, offering glimpses to a photograph of Sankofa’s “porch in the round”.
Printed on the mesh strips are frames taken from two interviews. The first is filmed on Pupa’s stoop, a gathering place for people on the Block where Haferd also lives. The second is a walking interview of Tommy, who recounts the social landscape of the neighborhood, the Block, and the Park - and how the Sankofa project fits into the spatial legacy of social life in the Park and its adjacent neighborhood.