For more than 60 million refugees, asylum seekers, and internally displaced people around the world, “shelter” has been experienced through relentless movement and escape.
Drawing comparisons to an M.C. Escher composition, a pinecone, or even an insect’s exoskeleton, Thomas Heatherwick’s Vessel is a 16-story steel pavilion with 80 viewing platforms, 154 flights of stairs, and almost 2,500 steps.
“People thought New York was finished,” says Architectural Record editor in chief Cathleen McGuigan, thinking back on the days after September 11, 2001. “People didn't understand how a city could go on.” But in the decade that followed, the city and country did carry on, spurred by tragedy into new conversations about politics, security, and architecture.
New York is infamous for its small living spaces—an apartment so teeny that its occupants must use the oven for storage, or a tenement so tight that the bathtub is in the kitchen.